Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

If the pipeline crashes during operation:

• Was a KEYWORD error received? Check to see that all mandatory keywords are present and formatted appropriately.

  Common issues are:

  • Keyword OBSTYPE is not of the form: 'OBJECT', 'BIAS', 'DARK', 'FLAT'. note: 'FOCUS' is not an acceptable OBSTYPE
  • Keywords CRVAL1/CRVAL2 or OBSRA/OBSDEC are missing and astrometry cannot be preformed
  • The format of original files do not match required format in specific_instruments.py

• Did the pipeline fail at the MAKESKY step? Check to see if there are large saturated portions in a majority of the frames (if 'skyflattarg = True' then check if the majority of a frames from a single target have this distortion). The images may require greater dithering so sources do not overlap, otherwise large sections of the sky will be interpolated over.

• Did an external call (autoastrometry, swarp, sex) fail? Check that you have specified paths correctly and have the required software installed for astrometry/coadding

• Did an external call a catalogue fail? Check that you have an internet connection, or else make sure the links to each catalogue are up to date in get_SEDs.py.

• Did it encounter some other error while processing a file?
  Check which file the program was working on when it crashed. If the file is not essential, try deleting it and re-running the pipeline starting with the current step (or delete ALL of the file's precursors with the same file number and rerun the pipeline.)

If processing completed, but the results are problematic:

• Did it return without actually processing any data? Make sure that it is in the current working directory or that you have correctly pointed to the directory containing raw data with the "datadir" keyword. If you are re-doing a step, it will not overwrite existing files by default. Set the redo keyword to overwrite files from a previously-attempted step (be sure to set "start" or "step" unless you want to restart the pipeline from the beginning.)

• Were some files skipped? If the pipeline encountered a non-fatal problem processing an individual image (such as an inability to flatfield) then it will not process that file any further. For most cases a summary of the problems will be printed out at the end of processing. If a file is not being processed and you do not see it in the final summary, you can simply rerun the pipeline (without deleting any files and without setting the redo flag) and it will try to repeat any failed steps of this nature.