Installation error - unsolvable sortmerna issue

Technical Support
1

Hi,

A friend shared some fastq.gz files of 16S to compare communities across a river. I offered to analyze them,so I am trying to install qiime2 in conda, and it failed with error:
conda env create
--name qiime2
--file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qiime2/distributions/refs/heads/dev/2026.7/qiime2/released/rachis-qiime2-linux-64-conda.yml -y
Retrieving notices: done
Channels:

  • conda-forge
  • bioconda
  • released
  • defaults
    Platform: linux-64
    Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): done
    Solving environment: failed

LibMambaUnsatisfiableError: Encountered problems while solving:

  • package deblur-1.1.1-pyhdfd78af_0 requires sortmerna 2.0, but none of the providers can be installed

Could not solve for environment specs
The following package could not be installed
└─ deblur =1.1.1 * is not installable because it requires
└─ sortmerna ==2.0 *, which conflicts with any installable versions previously reported.

I tried a clean/new environment to make it easier, and it failed.
The code and full error message is as follows:

I used --verbose as suggested:
conda env create --name qiime2 --file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qiime2/distributions/refs/heads/dev/2026.7/qiime2/released/rachis-qiime2-linux-64-conda.yml -y --verbose
Channels:

  • conda-forge
  • bioconda
  • released
  • defaults
    Platform: linux-64
    Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): ...working... done
    Solving environment: ...working... warning libmamba The specification of the environment does not seem solvable in your current setup.
    warning libmamba For instance, packages from different channels might be specified,
    warning libmamba whilst your current configuration might not allow their resolution.
    warning libmamba
    warning libmamba If it is the case, you need to either:
    warning libmamba - adapt the channel ordering (e.g. by reordering the -c flags in your command line)
    warning libmamba - use the flexible channel priority (e.g. using --channel-priority flexible in your command line)
    warning libmamba
    warning libmamba For reference, see this piece of documentation on channel priority:
    warning libmamba Managing channels — conda 26.7.1 documentation
    failed

LibMambaUnsatisfiableError: Encountered problems while solving:

  • package deblur-1.1.1-pyhdfd78af_0 requires sortmerna 2.0, but none of the providers can be installed

Could not solve for environment specs
The following package could not be installed
└─ deblur =1.1.1 * is not installable because it requires
└─ sortmerna ==2.0 *, which conflicts with any installable versions previously reported.

Hope it can be installed in conda, by the way, docker doesn't work in my HPC.

2

Hi @desmodus1984, this looks like the same as this issue: WSL2 install q2 error and should be solved by trying to set

conda config --set channel_priority flexible

Then retry the same environment creation command again. Let me know if that fixes your issue!