[Shake-dev] Bug warning and workaround -- please read

[Bruce Worden]

Hi All,

A condition exists that can cause genex to fail under certain circumstances. The problem occurs when the ShakeMap database's "earthquake" table has NULL values in the "tabsol" or "tzone" columns. These entries can be created when the event ID given on the ShakeMap programs' command line (and hence the name of the event's data directory) is different from the "evid" attribute of the "earthquake" tag in the input file event.xml.

Earlier versions of ShakeMap were tolerant of the NULL values, however newer versions -- in particular those using the DateTime module -- are not. genex will fail, and the run will abort.

The workaround is to delete the spurious entries from your ShakeMap databases. Log in to MySQL using your ShakeMap credentials and do the following:

	mysql> use shakemap;
	mysql> select evid from earthquake where tabsol is NULL;

This will list the offending event IDs. If you don't have any, you're done. If you have some of the NULL entries, do:

	mysql> delete from earthquake where tabsol is NULL;

or you can delete the entries individually by evid. Check that there are no NULL 'tzone' columns while you are at it.

The problem will be fixed in the next release (but the fixed code is online now if you want to grab it). Going forward, the "evid" attribute in the "earthquake" tag of event.xml will be ignored, but for versions of ShakeMap before 1378, please make sure that it matches the data directory name for any events or scenarios you run.

Thanks,
Bruce