Error running metaphlan and humann

humann v3.8

I’m trying to run humann through my institution’s HPC cluster and running into an issue that they were unsure how to resolve. I’m starting with fastq.gz files and the program runs into an error when trying to run MetaPhlAn. Here is my input:

module load humann/3.8
cd /scratch/g/jkirby/Landon_WGS_reanalysis/Figure_8/
humann --input humann/examples/demo.fastq.gz --output humann_demo

And here is the output including all the error messages:

Creating output directory: /scratch/g/jkirby/Landon_WGS_reanalysis/Figure_8/humann_demo

Output files will be written to: /scratch/g/jkirby/Landon_WGS_reanalysis/Figure_8/humann_demo

Decompressing gzipped file …

Running metaphlan …

CRITICAL ERROR: Error executing: /hpc/apps/miniconda3/4.9.2/envs/humann-3.8/bin/metaphlan /scratch/g/jkirby/Landon_WGS_reanalysis/Figure_8/humann_demo/demo_humann_temp/tmpobntluyw/tmppz5g72wz -t rel_ab -o /scratch/g/jkirby/Landon_WGS_reanalysis/Figure_8/humann_demo/demo_humann_temp/demo_metaphlan_bugs_list.tsv --input_type fastq --bowtie2out /scratch/g/jkirby/Landon_WGS_reanalysis/Figure_8/humann_demo/demo_humann_temp/demo_metaphlan_bowtie2.txt

Error message returned from metaphlan :

Downloading http://cmprod1.cibio.unitn.it/biobakery4/metaphlan_databases/mpa_latest

Warning: Unable to download http://cmprod1.cibio.unitn.it/biobakery4/metaphlan_databases/mpa_latest

Traceback (most recent call last):

File “/hpc/apps/miniconda3/4.9.2/envs/humann-3.8/bin/metaphlan”, line 10, in

sys.exit(main())

File “/hpc/apps/miniconda3/4.9.2/envs/humann-3.8/lib/python3.10/site-packages/metaphlan/metaphlan.py”, line 996, in main

pars[‘index’] = check_and_install_database(pars[‘index’], pars[‘bowtie2db’], pars[‘bowtie2_build’], pars[‘nproc’], pars[‘force_download’], pars[‘offline’])

File “/hpc/apps/miniconda3/4.9.2/envs/humann-3.8/lib/python3.10/site-packages/metaphlan/init.py”, line 303, in check_and_install_database

index = resolve_latest_database(bowtie2_db, mpa_latest, force_redownload_latest, offline)

File “/hpc/apps/miniconda3/4.9.2/envs/humann-3.8/lib/python3.10/site-packages/metaphlan/init.py”, line 267, in resolve_latest_database

with open(os.path.join(bowtie2_db,‘mpa_latest’)) as mpa_latest:

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘/hpc/apps/miniconda3/4.9.2/envs/humann-3.8/lib/python3.10/site-packages/metaphlan/metaphlan_databases/mpa_latest’

I would just download mpa_latest, but there’s nothing downloadable at http://cmprod1.cibio.unitn.it/biobakery4/metaphlan_databases/mpa_latest so I’m not sure what to do.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

You will have to download the db from here: Index of /biobakery4/metaphlan_databases
the link http://cmprod1.cibio.unitn.it/biobakery4/metaphlan_databases/mpa_latest just tells you what the latest version is.

1 Like

This has been fixed in subsequent HUMAnN + MetaPhlAn version pairs, but another option is to add --metaphlan-options "--offline" when running HUMAnN. This tells MetaPhlAn not to try do anything web-aware (e.g. looking for database updates) that can result in this sort of error.