Error Messages Output

A variety of error messages are printed by Dakota in the event that an error is detected in the input specification. Some of the more common input errors, and the associated error messages, are described below.

Note

Also see Common Specification Mistakes.

Incorrectly spelled specifications, such as numericl_gradients, will result in error messages of the form:

Input line 31: unrecognized identifier 'numericl_gradients'.
Input line 31: unrecognized identifier 'method_source'.
Input line 31: unrecognized identifier 'dakota'.
Input line 31: unrecognized identifier 'interval_type'.
Input line 31: unrecognized identifier 'central'.
Input line 31: unrecognized identifier 'fd_gradient_step_size'.
Input line 31: One of the following 4 entities
must be specified for responses...
    analytic_gradients
    mixed_gradients
    no_gradients
    numerical_gradients

In this example the line numbers given are approximate, as all input following an errant keywords is considered a single line through the end of the block.

The input parser catches syntax errors, but not logic errors. The fact that certain input combinations are erroneous must be detected after parsing, at object construction time. For example, if a no_gradients specification for a response data set is combined with selection of a gradient-based optimization method, then this error must be detected during set-up of the optimizer (see last line of listing):

Error: gradient-based minimizers require a gradient specification.

Many such errors can be detected earlier by running dakota -check.

Another common mistake involves a mismatch between the amount of data expected on a function evaluation and the data returned by the user’s simulation code or driver. The available response data is specified in the responses keyword block, and the subset of this data needed for a particular evaluation is managed by the active set vector. For example, if Dakota expects function values and gradients to be returned (as indicated by an active set vector containing 3’s), but the user’s simulation code only returns function values, then the following error message is generated:

At EOF: insufficient data for functionGradient 1

Unfortunately, descriptive error messages are not available for all possible failure modes of Dakota. If you encounter core dumps, segmentation faults, or other failures, please request help from the Dakota team.