Conda Issues

Conda issues can be the root cause for just about any issue on this page. Scroll through this section, for what may look familiar, and follow those instructions:

  • 404 error, The channel is not accessible or is invalid.

    If you are receiving this, you may be victim of us changing the channel name out from underneath you (Sorry!). Remove the offending channel(s):

    conda config --remove channels https://mooseframework.org/conda/moose
    conda config --remove channels https://mooseframework.com/conda/moose
    conda config --remove channels https://mooseframework.inl.gov/conda/moose

    If you receive errors about a channel not present (CondaKeyError), please ignore. You most likely will not have all three 'old' channels. Next, add the correct channel:

    conda config --add channels idaholab

    When you're finished, a conda config --show channels should resemble the following:

    $ conda config --show channels
    channels:
      - idaholab
      - conda-forge
      - defaults

  • command not found: conda

    You have yet to install conda, or your path to it is incorrect or not set. You will need to recall how you installed conda. Our instructions ask to have Miniconda3 installed to your home directory: ~/miniconda3. Which requires you to set your PATH accordingly:

    export PATH=~/miniconda3/bin:$PATH

    With PATH set, try to run again, what ever command you were initially attempting.

  • conda activate moose

    If conda activate moose is failing like so:

    CommandNotFoundError: Your shell has not been properly configured to use 'conda activate'.
    To initialize your shell, run
    
        $ conda init <SHELL_NAME>
    
    Currently supported shells are:
      - bash
      - fish
      - tcsh
      - xonsh
      - zsh
      - powershell
    
    See 'conda init --help' for more information and options.
    
    IMPORTANT: You may need to close and restart your shell after running 'conda init'.

    ...it's possible you have yet to perform a conda init properly. See conda init below.

    It could also mean you have an older version of Conda, or that the environment you are trying to activate is somewhere other than where conda thinks it should be, or simply missing / not yet created. Unfortunately, much of what can be diagnosed, is going to be beyond the scope of this document, and better left to the support teams at Conda. What we can attempt, is to create a new environment and go from there:

    conda create --name testing --quiet --yes

    The above should create an empty environment. Try and activate it:

    conda activate testing

    If the above is asking you to initialize conda, see conda init below.

    If the command failed, or the conda create command before it, the error will likely be involved with how Conda was first installed (perhaps with sudo rights, or as another user). You should look into removing this installation of conda, and starting over with our Getting Started instructions. Failures of this nature can also mean your conda resource file (~/.condarc) is in bad shape. We have no way of diagnosing this in a troubleshooting fashion, as this file can contain more than just moose-related configs. For reference, the bare minimum should resemble the following:

    channels:
      - idaholab
      - conda-forge
      - defaults

  • conda init

    If conda init is failing, or similarly doing nothing, it is possible that Conda simply does not know what shell you are operating in, and it created a 'configuration' for the wrong shell, or not at all.

    To figure out what shell you are operating in:

    echo $0

    What ever returns here, is the type of shell you are operating in, and is also what you should be instructing Conda to 'initialize'. Example:

    conda init zsh

    Hint: For Linux, this will most likely be conda init bash. For Macintosh, this can either be bash or zsh.

  • Your issue not listed

    The quick fix-attempt, is to re-install the moose-packages:

    conda deactivate
    conda remove moose --all --yes
    conda create moose moose-libmesh moose-tools

    If the above re-install method ultimately failed, it is time to submit your errors to the discussion forum.