[Users] VisIt HDF5 directory-dependent read-in failures?

[Bernard Kelly]

Hi all.

I have some Carpet-generated 3D HDF5 data I want to look at in VisIt,
but have encountered a weird issue trying to read it in, and wondered
whether anyone else has encountered it.

The data output is from a single time step, but was chunked, so there
are 32 separate files that have to be recombined to reconstruct the
whole data snapshot. I'm using the hdf5_merge utility for this
purpose. Here's the issue:

* if I start up VisIt and read the merged data file from the directory
it was created in, it works fine.

* if I move/copy the merged data file elsewhere (like down a level in
the directory tree), and try to get VisIt to read from the new
location, it fails. Sample error (I tried gluing together just the
first two chunks for this example):

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VisIt could not read from the file "<full directory path>/By.xyz.file_0-1.h5".

The generated error message was:

There was an error opening <full directory path>/By.xyz.file_0-1.h5.
It may be an invalid file.  VisIt tried using the following file
format readers to open the file: CarpetHDF5

The following error(s) may be helpful in identifying the problem:
Tried to access an invalid index 1 (Maximum = 0).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no problem with opening any of the original chunked files,
regardless of location.

Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Thanks,

Bernard

P.S. After starting to compose this, I found that *some* of the
maerged files started working everywhere, while others didn't. It's
quite confusing.

P.P.S. This is the latest version of VisIt, installed on OS X 10.11.6
(El Capitan). I don't know which version of ET produced the original
data, but my hdf5_merge came from ET two generations back (2015_05).