Installation failure : empty channel

Hello I am encountering Qiime2 2025.4 installation failure. It seems the github channel link is empty. Any tips? Following the prompts for listing channels and sources did not remedy. Here is the miniconda script, based on Qiime2 homepage quickstart instructions:

"(base) C:\Users\Cheer>conda env create -n using-qiime2 --file https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qiime2/distributions/dev/latest/passed/qiime2-tiny-ubuntu-latest-conda.yml
Channels:

UnavailableInvalidChannel: HTTP 404 NOT FOUND for channel qiime2/distributions/refs/heads/dev/2025.4/amplicon/released/>

The channel is not accessible or is invalid.

You will need to adjust your conda configuration to proceed.
Use conda config --show channels to view your configuration's current state,
and use conda config --show-sources to view config file locations.

(base) C:\Users\Cheer>conda update conda
Channels:

UnavailableInvalidChannel: HTTP 404 NOT FOUND for channel qiime2/distributions/refs/heads/dev/2025.4/amplicon/released/>

The channel is not accessible or is invalid.

You will need to adjust your conda configuration to proceed.
Use conda config --show channels to view your configuration's current state,
and use conda config --show-sources to view config file locations.

Welcome to the forums!

Here's the main issue:
Platform: win-64

Qiime2 does not run on Windows, but it does run on Windows Subsystem for Linux.

Looks like the Amplicon Quickstart tell you to install miniconda first, but it's a trap!
On Windows, set up WSL first, then install miniconda inside WSL.
Then this same command will work.

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Ah! Thank you, [colinbrislawn]. I followed those instructions on my windows 11 machine, installing WSL, reinstall Miniconda within wsl, and then the qiime2 distributions tiny and amplicon. Still no success. Do these errors mean firewall issues encountered? Thanks very much!

{(base) C:\Users\Cheer> conda env create -n qiime2tiny --file=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qiime2/distributions/refs/heads/dev/2025.4/tiny/released/qiime2-tiny-ubuntu-latest-conda.yml
Channels:

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

LibMambaUnsatisfiableError: Encountered problems while solving:

  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • unsupported request
  • nothing provides __unix needed by libstdcxx-devel_linux-64-14.2.0-h2171cc4_1
  • nothing provides __unix needed by libgcc-devel_linux-64-14.2.0-h2171cc4_1
  • package r-reticulate-1.36.0-r41ha856d6a_0 requires m2w64-gcc-libs-core, but none of the providers can be installed

Could not solve for environment specs
The following packages are incompatible
├─ _openmp_mutex =4.5 * is installable and it requires
│ └─ msys2-conda-epoch <0.0a0 *, which can be installed;
├─ binutils_impl_linux-64 =2.43 * does not exist (perhaps a typo or a missing channel);
├─ gcc_impl_linux-64 =14.2.0 * does not exist (perhaps a typo or a missing channel);
├─ gfortran_impl_linux-64 =14.2.0 * does not exist (perhaps a typo or a missing channel);
├─.....
Failed to run 'conda activate qiime2amplicon'.}

1 Like

HI @rt411,

It appears that although you may have installed WSL... you've not installed minconda into WSL. As evidenced by:

and

Note that these are back slashes and not forward slashes. That is, this is the Windows command prompt. Also, you should be seeing Platform: linux-64 when in WSL.

Make sure you are launching WSL and installing the Linux version of minoconda into WSL. See the following posts for more details:

-Mike

2 Likes

Great, thanks for your help, Mike!

1 Like