Re: 19990701: 'bad type' error

>From: Nan Rosenbloom <address@hidden>
>Subject: 'bad type' error
>Organization: NCAR
>Keywords: 199907011622.KAA17940 netCDF

Hi Nan,

> Good morning.  I just opened a netcdf file for a write command (to
> delete an attribute), but accidentally aborted the executable shortly
> after it started.  To my dismay it appears to have blown away access to
> the existing netcdf file.  Here is the error message I get.  Is there
> any hope to save the file?
> 
> 116 dataproc:/wp/cgd/nanr/tdaily/monthlyFiles/scenarios% nh test.nc
> netcdf test {
> dimensions:
>         month = 2412 ;
>         grid = UNLIMITED ; // (3261 currently)
> variables:
> ncdump: type_name: bad type 1179538679
> 
> I have many good reasons to TRY to get this file back!

It may be possible to recover the file if you were only deleting an
attribute, but it will require some work even to determine whether
this can be done (basically looking at the netCDF header information
in the file as it now exists, manually parsing what's there, and
comparing with what should be there according to the netCDF format
specification).  

Recovering the file from incremental backups would certainly be
preferable, if it had been copied to a backup medium.  Have you
already checked that no backup copy of the file exists?  I'm asking
because I thought all the files on "dataproc" were backed up
regularly.  I think you can check on whether a backup exists with
something like "msrestore -l <full_pathname_of_file>".

If there is no backup, please make a copy of the damaged file
available to me somehow as well as the name of the variable attribute
you were trying to delete and a dump of the header information of a
file of similar structure.  I'll see what can be done, though I'm not
sure I'll be able to get to this right away ...

--Russ

_____________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                         UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                     http://www.unidata.ucar.edu