IPOPT Output

This section describes the standard IPOPT console output with the default setting for print_level. The output is designed to provide a quick summary of each iteration as IPOPT solves the problem.

Before IPOPT starts to solve the problem, it displays the problem statistics (number of nonzero-elements in the matrices, number of variables, etc.). Note that if you have fixed variables (both upper and lower bounds are equal), IPOPT may remove these variables from the problem internally and not include them in the problem statistics.

Following the problem statistics, IPOPT will begin to solve the problem and you will see output resembling the following,

iter    objective    inf_pr   inf_du lg(mu)  ||d||  lg(rg) alpha_du alpha_pr  ls
   0  1.6109693e+01 1.12e+01 5.28e-01   0.0 0.00e+00    -  0.00e+00 0.00e+00   0
   1  1.8029749e+01 9.90e-01 6.62e+01   0.1 2.05e+00    -  2.14e-01 1.00e+00f  1
   2  1.8719906e+01 1.25e-02 9.04e+00  -2.2 5.94e-02   2.0 8.04e-01 1.00e+00h  1

and the columns of output are defined as,

iter:

The current iteration count. This includes regular iterations and iterations while in restoration phase. If the algorithm is in the restoration phase, the letter r' will be appended to the iteration number.

objective:

The unscaled objective value at the current point. During the restoration phase, this value remains the unscaled objective value for the original problem.

inf_pr:

The scaled primal infeasibility at the current point. During the restoration phase, this value is the primal infeasibility of the original problem at the current point.

inf_du:

The scaled dual infeasibility at the current point. During the restoration phase, this is the value of the dual infeasibility for the restoration phase problem.

lg(mu):

$\log_{10}$ of the value of the barrier parameter mu.

||d||:

The infinity norm (max) of the primal step (for the original variables $x$ and the internal slack variables $s$). During the restoration phase, this value includes the values of additional variables, $p$ and $n$ (see Eq. (30) in [7]).

lg(rg):

$\log_{10}$ of the value of the regularization term for the Hessian of the Lagrangian in the augmented system.

alpha_du:

The stepsize for the dual variables.

alpha_pr:

The stepsize for the primal variables.

ls:

The number of backtracking line search steps.

When the algorithm terminates, IPOPT will output a message to the screen based on the return status of the call to Optimize. The following is a list of the possible return codes, their corresponding output message to the console, and a brief description.

Solve_Succeeded:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Optimal Solution Found.
This message indicates that IPOPT found a (locally) optimal point within the desired tolerances.

Solved_To_Acceptable_Level:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Solved To Acceptable Level.
This indicates that the algorithm did not converge to the ``desired'' tolerances, but that it was able to obtain a point satisfying the ``acceptable'' tolerance level as specified by acceptable-* options. This may happen if the desired tolerances are too small for the current problem.

Feasible_Point_Found:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Feasible point for square problem found.
This message is printed if the problem is ``square'' (i.e., it has as many equality constraints as free variables) and IPOPT found a feasible point.

Infeasible_Problem_Detected:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Converged to a point of local infeasibility. Problem may be infeasible.
The restoration phase converged to a point that is a minimizer for the constraint violation (in the $\ell_1$-norm), but is not feasible for the original problem. This indicates that the problem may be infeasible (or at least that the algorithm is stuck at a locally infeasible point). The returned point (the minimizer of the constraint violation) might help you to find which constraint is causing the problem. If you believe that the NLP is feasible, it might help to start the optimization from a different point.

Search_Direction_Becomes_Too_Small:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Search Direction is becoming Too Small.
This indicates that IPOPT is calculating very small step sizes and making very little progress. This could happen if the problem has been solved to the best numerical accuracy possible given the current scaling.

Diverging_Iterates:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Iterates divering; problem might be unbounded.
This message is printed if the max-norm of the iterates becomes larger than the value of the option diverging_iterates_tol. This can happen if the problem is unbounded below and the iterates are diverging.

User_Requested_Stop:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Stopping optimization at current point as requested by user.
This message is printed if the user call-back method intermediate_callback returned false (see Section 3.3.4).

Maximum_Iterations_Exceeded:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Maximum Number of Iterations Exceeded.
This indicates that IPOPT has exceeded the maximum number of iterations as specified by the option max_iter.

Restoration_Failed:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Restoration Failed!
This indicates that the restoration phase failed to find a feasible point that was acceptable to the filter line search for the original problem. This could happen if the problem is highly degenerate, does not satisfy the constraint qualification, or if your NLP code provides incorrect derivative information.

Error_In_Step_Computation:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Error in step computation (regularization becomes too large?)!
This messages is printed if IPOPT is unable to compute a search direction, despite several attempts to modify the iteration matrix. Usually, the value of the regularization parameter then becomes too large. One situation where this can happen is when values in the Hessian are invalid (NaN or Inf). You can check whether this is true by using the check_derivatives_for_naninf option.

Invalid_Option:

$\;$
Console Message: (details about the particular error will be output to the console)
This indicates that there was some problem specifying the options. See the specific message for details.

Not_Enough_Degrees_Of_Freedom:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Problem has too few degrees of freedom.
This indicates that your problem, as specified, has too few degrees of freedom. This can happen if you have too many equality constraints, or if you fix too many variables (IPOPT removes fixed variables).

Invalid_Problem_Definition:

$\;$
Console Message: (no console message, this is a return code for the C and Fortran interfaces only.)
This indicates that there was an exception of some sort when building the IpoptProblem structure in the C or Fortran interface. Likely there is an error in your model or the main routine.

Unrecoverable_Exception:

$\;$
Console Message: (details about the particular error will be output to the console)
This indicates that IPOPT has thrown an exception that does not have an internal return code. See the specific message for details.

NonIpopt_Exception_Thrown:

$\;$
Console Message: Unknown Exception caught in Ipopt
An unknown exception was caught in IPOPT. This exception could have originated from your model or any linked in third party code.

Insufficient_Memory:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: Not enough memory.
An error occurred while trying to allocate memory. The problem may be too large for your current memory and swap configuration.

Internal_Error:

$\;$
Console Message: EXIT: INTERNAL ERROR: Unknown SolverReturn value - Notify IPOPT Authors.
An unknown internal error has occurred. Please notify the authors of IPOPT via the mailing list.