beginner: Again MapInfo .tab .dat .id .map with white image

[Julien Buratto]

Hi there, happy to enter the world of mapping  :-D

I've been reading past posts about this topic, but I could not
figure-out how to solve my problem.

An institution in my country passed me the MapInfo cds with hundreds of
files, name XXXXXXX.TAB .DAT .ID .MAP

At the beginning I was desperate (yeye geek panic), then I ogr2ogr all
them to postgis and I was feeling confortable, but could not generate my
first map (always the same, white, invisibile gif square :-D)

Then I decide to use the CONNECTIONTYPE OGR directly to those files
because shp2img was complaining about some SQL and I thought it was not
worth at the beginning to use postgis, better start with MapInfo files.

My ogrinfo reports a loooong long report showing each row of data
present, while the summary shows (for one file):

ogrinfo /root/data_cd/269140.TAB -summary 269140
Had to open data source read-only.
INFO: Open of `/root/dati_cd/269140.TAB'
using driver `MapInfo File' successful.

Layer name: 269140
Geometry: Unknown (any)
Feature Count: 386
Extent: (2365748.451000, 4851329.181000) - (2366928.857000, 4852758.777000)
Layer SRS WKT:
PROJCS["unnamed",
    GEOGCS["unnamed",
        DATUM["Monte_Mario",
            SPHEROID["International 1924",6378388,297],
            TOWGS84[-225,-65,9,-0,-0,-0,0]],
        PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
        UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]],
    PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
    PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin",0],
    PARAMETER["central_meridian",15],
    PARAMETER["scale_factor",0.9996],
    PARAMETER["false_easting",2520000],
    PARAMETER["false_northing",0],
    UNIT["Meter",1.0]]
ID: Integer (0.0)
TIPO: String (15.0)
LIVELLO: String (15.0)
NUMFOGLIO: Integer (0.0)
NOMFOGLIO: String (30.0)
DESCRIZIONE: String (100.0)
TOPONIMO: String (60.0)
QUOTA1: Real (0.0)
QUOTA2: Real (0.0)

Well, my MAP is now:

NAME DEMO
STATUS ON
SIZE 400 300
UNITS METERS
IMAGECOLOR 255 255 255
FONTSET ../etc/fonts.txt
EXTENT 0 0 3072800 3840000

LAYER
NAME "269140"
TYPE RASTER
STATUS DEFAULT
CONNECTIONTYPE OGR
CONNECTION "/root/dati_cd/269140.TAB"
STYLEITEM "AUTO"
CLASS
      NAME "Elevation Poly 5"
      OUTLINECOLOR 0 0 0
      COLOR 128 128 128
END
END # Layer

END

When I hit "shp2img" I don't get errors, the file is generated white.

My questions are:
1) Could be a problem of EXTENT ?
2) Howcomes I set a non-existant file as connection and the shp2img goes
on without errors ? Shouldn't say something like "connection file not
found" ?
3) As I have hundreds of these files, should I create a LAYER for each
file ?

Thanks for your patience, and hope to show you my work online asap!

Julien