Troubleshooting and Known Issues

Overview

Although incomplete, this doc provides some troubleshooting advice and a list of known known failure modes.

Odd Behavior and/or Faults After Upgrading PypeIt

The best approach is to always re-reduce data you’re still working with anytime you update PypeIt.

Different versions of PypeIt may include changes to the input/output file data models. These changes are not required to be backwards-compatible, meaning that faults may occur when trying to use files intended for or produced by your existing PypeIt version after upgrading to a new version.

Generally, incorrect data models will cause the code to fault. However, those faults may provide very obscure errors. If you run into a fault that you don’t understand, and you’ve recently upgraded your version of PypeIt, your go-to troubleshooting test should be to re-reduce your data.

Bad Headers

A common failure mode is individual data files have corrupt headers. This occurs somewhat frequently at the Keck Observatory when the instrument loses connectivity with the telescope.

The pypeit_setup and pypeit_obslog scripts have been written to be immune from this. Therefore, a failure when using this scripts should be brought to the attention of the developers.

The run_pypeit script, however, is designed to fail as the default when presented with files that have corrupt headers. To over-ride that, you need to add the following to your PypeIt Reduction File:

[rdx]
ignore_bad_headers = True

Note that PypeIt always uses the entries in your data block (often slurped from the headers) as the true values, i.e. you can modify those by hand to over-come aspects of your corrupt header.

Error in astropy.stats.sigma_clipped_stats

An error in astropy.stats.sigma_clipped_stats for Astropy version 6.1.6 can lead to data being overly masked; see the Astropy Changelog. If you see odd masking behavior, check your Astropy version. Note that PypeIt currently requires a version where this error has been corrected.