3. OSSE Pipeline Troubleshooting

3.1 Screwball Stuff

Items listed here are some general `oddities' in the way the pipelines operate. They should be noted and kept in mind when running the pipelines.

• If you process a given viewing period of high-level data products before the corresponding low-level data products, the high-level products will not be accessible via W3Browse until the low-level products are placed on-line. This is because the TDAT file which is ingested into the W3Browse database usually generated after the low-level pipeline is run.
• The GZIP (used in all runs for compressing the data files) program will not overwrite an existing file. This can be a problem if you try to overwrite existing data in the staging area. You should always run SDB_BATCH and HLP_BATCH with the appropriate staging area clean of a previous data run.
• In general, if you experience some type of run failure, the safest course of action is to delete the products from the NATIVE and STAGE areas, reload the data from tape, and rerun the process.
• In principle, build_new_tdat can be run at any time. (Make sure you run tdat_library beforehand.) This procedure generates a TDAT file for the entire OSSE archive and replaces any previous TDAT files.

3.2 Process Logging Files

3.2.1 Master Logging File

Stored in the [.logs] directory. Contains the log file of the overall process. This includes messages from FITSification as well as other processes in the pipeline.

3.2.2 Success & Failure Logs

Also stored in the [.logs] directory. The failure log is mailed to the process owner.

3.2.3 Single File FITSification Log

These are stored in the [.native] subdirectory tree. Empty ones are deleted at the close of the run.

Error Messages in Single File FITSification Logs:

targname: used default target name for target ID 0

*BURST.SDB and *SLOT.SDB have no pointed targets. For them, this message is okay.

targname: used default target name for target ID 0

If the error is from an *SPM.SDB file and the target ID corresponds to an actual target, it may be because the conversion program cannot find the PLANNING_CATALOG.CAT file. The pipeline points to the primary catalog in the local IGORE installation. If IGORE has been changed, this may be the problem.

PREP2FITS: TTYPE is missing from primary binary table.

onversion process died. If there are no spectral records in the file, you will get this message from FITSification. This can happen to *BURST.SDB, *C60.SDB, and *SLOT.SDB files. This should have a corresponding entry in the failure log.

The failure log is mailed to the OSSEPIPE account on completion of FITSification. It and the Success Log are stored at the symbol OSSE_LOGDISK.

OSSE_FAILURE_DNdddd.LOG

3.2.4 Failure Logs

field name	value	interpretation
filename	-	Name of input SDB or PDF file
type	SDB,PDF	File type
error type	convert	Generated by SDB2FITS
	reconvert	Generated by FITS2SDB
	compare	Generated by SDBCOMPARE
filesize		File size in blocks
delivery number
viewing period
date		Date processed
message	'Unknown at this time'
	y	??
	n	??
SW version		software version

3.2.5 Success Logs

OSSE_SUCCESS_DNdddd.LOG

field name	value	interpretation
infilename	-	Name of input SDB or PDF file
outfilename	-	Name of output FITS file
type	SDB,PDF	File type
filesize
delivery number
viewing period
date
SW version		software version

3.3 Error Conditions

Error in BURST files

Upon completion of the FITS conversion process, the failure log for this portion of the processing is sent to user OSSEPIPE as an e-mail message. Always check the OSSEPIPE e-mail after a run completion. Entries in the failure log which have fields 2, 3, and 4 filled with the string ``SDB,convert,'' may be safely ignored. For example, the following log entry is an acceptable processing event:

$disk9:[osse.native.deliv_100]P933010000_BURST.sdb,SDB,convert,
1,26,305.0,7-OCT-1995 09:48:24,Unknown at this time,y,n,6.0

This error is probably generated by an empty OSSE BURST file. Before ignoring it, check the file size of the BURST SDB file in the native directory. If it is only a few blocks in size (these files are usually several hundred to several thousand blocks) then this is the most likely source of the error and this message can be safely ignored.

If FITS file shows target not found

The planning_catalog.cat file may have been changed. Pipeline points to the primary catalog in the local IGORE installation. If IGORE has been changed, this may be a problem.

Failures of SLOT.SDB files.

Due to a processing error at NRL. Contact the OSSE team (what's left of it) to have the files reprocessed and re-delivered.

3.4 Processing Log Files