KBI0030: Stalling file retrieval from RIA stores due to missing 7z

authors:

Adina Wagner <adina.wagner@t-online.de>

discussion:

https://github.com/psychoinformatics-de/knowledge-base/issues/119

keywords:

RIA, 7zip, file retrieval, stalling

software-versions:

datalad_0.19.3, git-annex_20221003

Until a re-write of the RIA functionality has been achieved (see github.com/datalad/datalad-ria for progress), certain RIA-related issues can be hard to pinpoint. In cases where content in a RIA store has been compressed into 7-zip archives (KBI 0024 details instructions and benefits), it is important that 7-zip is installed and available on the machine hosting the RIA store. Otherwise, file content retrieval via datalad get to a different machine can stall indefinitely and without any indication of an error.

An installation of 7-zip is automatically included with some installation methods for datalad (for example when its installed as a Debian package), but since the hosting machine of a RIA store does not need to have datalad installed, a stand-alone installation is suitable as well [1].

Footnotes

[1]

For example with miniconda (which works even on multi-user systems without needing elevated privileges):

$ wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -O shared/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
$ bash shared/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh -p ~/shared/miniconda3
# An interactive installer will ask you to read and agree to the
# license terms, and will ask you to confirm the installation location.
# reply "yes" when asked whether to perform a conda init
$ conda install -c conda-forge p7zip