In this guide, we describe some of the most common issues encountered during local installation of Python packages, as well as the troubleshooting steps to try to fix the issues.

Troubleshooting Steps

The following troubleshooting steps can be used to try to solve common issues:

Note: The commands here should be executed via the command line, either using the Anaconda Prompt on Windows or the Terminal app on MacOS.

Step 1: Update your conda version

To make sure it isn’t an issue with conda itself, make sure you are using the latest version by running:

conda update -n base -c defaults conda

Step 2: Delete any existing environment

We want to create a fresh environment, so you can delete any environment that was giving you issues. If that environment was called 'musa-550-fall-2021', you can run the following commands to delete it:

conda deactivate

conda env remove --name musa-550-fall-2021

The first command will activate the 'base' environment and then the second command will perform the deletion.

Step 3: Create a fresh environment

Follow the instructions outlined here to create a fresh version of the course website.

Common Problems

Below we list some of the most common issues encountered when installing packages with Anaconda.

“Permission Denied” Errors on Windows

This is actually caused by a problem with the conda software on Windows. You should be able to solve it by updating to the latest version and following the above steps.

SSL Connection Errors

Connection errors can also sometimes occur on Windows that will prevent new packages being downloaded. Again, you should be able to solve it by updating to the latest version and following the above steps.

Missing package errors

If you have successfully followed the steps above to create your environment, but receive an ImportError when importing packages, you might have launched the notebook from the 'base' environment instead of the 'musa-550-fall-2021 environment. Be sure to activate the 'musa-550-fall-2021 environment before launching the notebook.

The file extension of the environment file on Windows

Be sure that Windows does not automatically add an .txt extension to your environment.yml file. This will cause conda to fail, with a cryptic error:

SpecNotFound: environment with requirements.txt needs a name

The environment file needs to end in .yml. You can change the extension for a file on Windows following these instructions.

Mixing pip and conda

The command pip can also be used to install Python packages. However, using pip to install packages into a conda environment can lead to issues. It’s best to stick to using the conda env update command to update your environment or conda install package_name to install specific packages.

Import errors for geopandas

When importing geopandas, you can sometimes receive errors about missing libraries. These is usually because packages got mixed up during installation.

The best and easiest thing to do to try to solve it is use the steps above to create a fresh environment.

Numpy errors

If you receive the following error:

ImportError: Something is wrong with the numpy installation. While importing we detected an older version of numpy in ['/Users/nhand/miniconda3/envs/musa-550-fall-2021 /lib/python3.6/site-packages/numpy']. One method of fixing this is to repeatedly uninstall numpy until none is found, then reinstall this version.

Make sure you are running the latest conda (see Step 1 above), and then from the Anaconda Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac), run:

conda install --force-reinstall --clobber numpy