[daip] Re: Help: AIPS catalogue file vanished

[Patrick P. Murphy]

On Tue, 14 Nov 2000 17:15:54 +0000 (GMT), Anthony Holloway
   <ajh at ast.man.ac.uk> said: 

> Hi Pat,
>  A user here has reported that all of his data on one disk has
> vanished. Investigating further it seems the catalogue file for his aips
> number

> CAD000000.02I;

> is missing on this disk, whilst many of the other files belonging to this
> aips number are there.

That's good.  It's likely only the catalog file is missing.  The most
important detail is that for each catalog slot with a MA or UV file,
there's an equivalent CB (catalog block) file.  This has the header info
(more or less what's in a FITS header).

> Can this situation be recovered or have they lost access to the data on
> this disk?

It can likely be recovered.  Here's how:

   1) Make sure the user has exited ALL aips sessions, on all systems in
      your environment.
   2) From the Unix command line (with the LOGIN.*SH file already
      sourced), do:
                RUN RECAT
      or
                RUN RECAT DA=blah
      (latter form if you need to include additional data areas to pull in
      the right one).
   3) Select the disk number and userid for the specific disk.
   4) Enter a suitably large range of catalog slots.  Estimate high
      (e.g. if user thinks the largest catalog slot was 100, use 500).
   5) Let it do its thing.
   6) WHen done, fire up AIPS and see if the catalog has been restored.

There *may* be more surgery to be done, but this is a good first pass to
attempt to restore things.

> Have you seen this before

Oh yes, lots of times!  :-)

				- Pat (currently at ADASS; fascinating
                                  stuff...)