[OSM-dev] 500 Server Error ... when deleting an OSM element

[Tom Hughes]

In message <18252.10868.205902.441288 at comedy.dante.de>
        Bernd Raichle <bernd at dante.de> wrote:

> starting a few days ago, each "delete" call returns "500 Server Error".

Don't you think it would have been sensible to report this when it
started happening instead of waiting several days?

> Example: Delete node 26471059 (48.8036965, 9.291118)
>
> JOSM logs the following things to the stdout:
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CUT HERE
> upload to: http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.5/node/26471059
> got return: 500 with id 26471059
> <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
> <osm version='0.5' generator='JOSM'>
>   <node id='26471059' timestamp='2007-11-27T11:15:00+00:00' user='BerndR' visible='true' lat='48.8036965' lon='9.291118'>
>     <tag k='created_by' v='JOSM' />
>     <tag k='note' v='DELETEME' />
>   </node>
> </osm>
>
> java.lang.RuntimeException: 500 Server Error
>         at org.streetmap.josm.io.OsmServerWriter.sendRequest(OsmServerWriter.java:192)
> [...]
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% CUT HERE

Well I've just deleted that node via the API and it worked fine.

> Adding new elements and changing the tagging of any element works
> perfectly, but I can't delete an element, neither a node nor a way.
> (As workaround I remove all tags of the elements to be deleted and tag
> them with "note=DELETEME".)

I'm not sure that's very helpful - it will be hard to find them again
later and remove them. It would have been better to report it at the
time so the problem could be investigated.

In fact I can't see any log entries for an attempt to delete that node
at any time in the last five days. Nor can I see any operation on that
node which has returned a 500 error. The only log entries I can see
are:

[26/Nov/2007:08:50:10 +0000] "PUT /api/0.5/node/26471059 HTTP/1.1" 200 1 "-" "Java/1.6.0_03"
[27/Nov/2007:11:15:00 +0000] "PUT /api/0.5/node/26471059 HTTP/1.1" 401 25 "-" "Java/1.6.0_03"
[27/Nov/2007:11:15:00 +0000] "PUT /api/0.5/node/26471059 HTTP/1.1" 200 1 "-" "Java/1.6.0_03"
[27/Nov/2007:14:38:45 +0000] "DELETE /api/0.5/node/26471059 HTTP/1.0" 401 25 "-" "lwp-request/2.08"
[27/Nov/2007:14:38:52 +0000] "DELETE /api/0.5/node/26471059 HTTP/1.0" 200 1 "-" "lwp-request/2.08"

So it was edited at 08:50 GMT yesterday, then again at 11:15 GMT this
morning, then I deleted it (from the command line with lwp-request).

If you can still reproduce this problem then please let me know the 
details object which you are unable to delete and the time at which
you tried to delete it so I can examine the logs.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/