[Geoserver-users] Geoserver 2.15.0, WCS 2.0.1 GetCoverage - "Blank Image" vs "Exception"

Hi, I’m having a strange inconsistency with some layers that I’m working on. I have two layers, I’ll call them layer_a and layer_b; Both of them are configured the same way, and are linked to a database that has information for a time series of data files. When I make the following call:

https://SERVERNAME/geoserver/WORKSPACE/wcs?service=WCS&version=2.0.1&request=GetCoverage&coverageId=layer_aformat=image/geotiff&compression=LZW&cql_filter=timestamp=2025-02-01T06:00:00.000Z

I get an exception: a 500 reponse code with a small bit of XML stating “Unable to read a coverage for the current request (could be due to filtering or subsetting)”. This seems valid to me, because that date doesn’t exist in the DB right now.

However, when I try the same query for layer_b:

https://SERVERNAME/geoserver/WORKSPACE/wcs?service=WCS&version=2.0.1&request=GetCoverage&coverageId=layer_bformat=image/geotiff&compression=LZW&cql_filter=timestamp=2025-02-01T06:00:00.000Z

I actually get a blank TIF image back. I’ve checked the configuration files for both, and they seem to be nearly identical:

coveragestore.xml - Identical except for values for id, name, and description, as well the “url” tag pointing to where the mosaic configuration is on disk

layer.xml - identical except for id and name values

coverage.xml - identical except for various ids, names, titles, descriptions, a little bit of indention difference for nativdcrs (but otherwise the content of that tag is identical), and layer_a has a few more supported formats.

In the mosaic data: the datastore.properties, indexer.properties, and timeregex.properties files are 100% identical; for the layer_a.properties/layer_b.properties files, the only difference is the Name and TypeName fields, matching the respective layer names.

Is there some other configuration thing that I may be overlooking that would cause this difference? I actually would prefer the exception - if the date is invalid, I want it to throw the exception, not return a blank image. But in any case, I just want them to be consistent with each other.

I’ve been scratching my head over this all day!

Thanks in advance!

Scott Lewis
NSIDC