Issues with loading sample-metadata in "Moving Pictures" tutorial

[kingharlaus123]

Dear all
I’m new to qiime 2 so I’m following the “Moving Pictures” tutorial. However, I am blocked with the following command:
qiime tools import
–type EMPSingleEndSequences
–input-path emp-single-end-sequences
–output-path emp-single-end-sequences.qza
getting:

There was an issue with loading the file sample-metadata.tsv as metadata:

Failed to locate header. The metadata file may be empty, or consists only of comments or empty rows.

There may be more errors present in the metadata file. To get a full report, sample/feature metadata files can be validated with Keemei: https://keemei.qiime2.org

Find details on QIIME 2 metadata requirements here: https://docs.qiime2.org/2020.8/tutorials/metadata/

My version of Qiime 2 is 2020.8, I followed the installation tutorial(windows 10, wsl2, miniconda)

maybe somebody can help
all the best

[ChrisKeefe]

Welcome to the forum, @kingharlaus123!

Error messages are always the best place to start.

@kingharlaus123

The metadata file may be empty, or consists only of comments or empty rows.

This error seems to be telling us that you're attempting to load a metadata file (with broken metadata), but the command you pasted doesn't take a metadata file. Is it possible that you've posted the wrong command, and this error message is coming from a different one?

[kingharlaus123]

Thanks for your reply sir. I rechecked the metadata file and I found it was not downloaded . I think it was because the great firewall in China prevented the connection. So I used a vpn and successfully downloaded the metadata.