[Users] Visit & CarpetHDF5 mismatch?

[Ian Hinder]

On 10 Apr 2012, at 22:21, Kelly, Bernard J. (GSFC-660.0)[UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY] wrote:

> Hi all. I'd like to visualise some 3D data produced by an initial-data run
> of the EinsteinToolkit (Maxwell).
> 
> 
> I'm outputting using CarpetIOHDF5; I have an output file
> "hahndol::hahndol_coulomb.h5", and decided to use Visit, as recommended by
> cactuscode, etc.
> 
> I grabbed the CarpetHDF5 plugin code from svn, and installed as per
> instructions (pointing at the ETK-installed HDF5 in my
> Cactus/configs/<config-name>/scratch/external directory).
> 
> Starting Visit (2.4.2) , and trying to load a .h5 file yields the
> following error:
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> The metadata server running on host localhost has exited abnormally. VisIt
> is trying to restart it.
> Shortly thereafter, the following occured...
> VisIt was unable to open
> "/Users/bjkelly1/Projects/CODES/Cactus/exe/BL_IJS_test/hahndol::hahndol_cou
> lomb.h5".  Each attempt to open it caused VisIt's metadata server to
> crash.  This can occur when the file is corrupted, or when the underlying
> file format has changed and VisIt's readers have not been updated yet, or
> when the reader VisIt is using for your file format is not robust.  Please
> check whether the file is corrupted and, if not, contact a VisIt developer.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> 
> 
> I have no idea whether the file is corrupted, but wanted to know: is the
> CarpetHDF5 plugin up-to-date with the output of Maxwell's CarpetIOHDF5?
> 
> Any basic ideas where I might have gone wrong?

One problem can come from Visit trying to open too many files for the maximum open file limit of your OS.  Mac OS, for example, has a very small limit.  Try changing this with ulimit.  But ultimately, you should try to find the actual error message.  I think there is an option for Visit to output the errors to a file, but it's so long since I've used Visit that I don't remember.  Probably someone else can fill that in...

-- 
Ian Hinder
http://numrel.aei.mpg.de/people/hinder