The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully

I tried to update or install new packages from anaconda and lately, this message has appeared:

The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully
The following package are causing the inconsistency:

   - defaults/win-32::anaconda==5.3.1=py37_0

done

I tried with conda clean --all and then conda update --all but it persists.

Conda Info

active environment : base
    active env location : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum
            shell level : 1
       user config file : C:\Users\NAME\.condarc
 populated config files : C:\Users\NAME\.condarc
          conda version : 4.6.11
    conda-build version : 3.17.7
         python version : 3.7.3.final.0
       base environment : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum  (writable)
           channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch
          package cache : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum\pkgs
                          C:\Users\NAME\.conda\pkgs
                          C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\conda\conda\pkgs
       envs directories : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum\envs
                          C:\Users\NAME\.conda\envs
                          C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs
               platform : win-32
             user-agent : conda/4.6.11 requests/2.21.0 CPython/3.7.3 Windows/10 Windows/10.0.17763
          administrator : False
             netrc file : None
           offline mode : False

I had faced the same problem. Simply running

conda install anaconda

solved the problem for me.

saw this on Google Groups

> This message was added in conda 4.6.9, previously there was no indication when conda detected an inconsistent environment unless conda was run in debug mode. It is likely that your environment was inconsistent for some time but the upgrade to conda made it visible. The best option it to run "conda install package_name" for the inconsistent packages to let conda try to restore consistency.

and it really works for me.

Maybe you should try conda install anaconda in your situation.

The inconsistencies are caused due to different versions of the packages, and their clashing dependencies.

conda update --all

This command updates all the packages, and then conda solves the inconsistency on its own.

Had this same problem and none of the other solutions worked for me. Ended up having to uninstall and reinstall conda, then reinstall all of my libraries.

Ultimate solutions:

conda activate base
conda install anaconda
conda update --all

Works on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 (credits to @MF.OX for ubuntu).

Removed following problems for me:

• The environment is inconsistent
• WARNING conda.base.context:use_only_tar_bz2(632)

If the other solutions don't work, reverting the environment can fix this.

Use conda list --revisions, pick a revision number, and use conda install --revision [#] going back step-by-step until everything works again.

Given a situation like the following,

> conda update -c intel --all
Collecting package metadata: done
Solving environment: |
The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully
The following packages are causing the inconsistency:

  - intel/win-64::ipython==6.3.1=py36_3
  - intel/win-64::prompt_toolkit==1.0.15=py36_2
done

As mentioned in other answers, the idea is to have some sort of re-installation to occur for the inconsistent packages.

Thus, with a few copy-&-paste's, you could:

> conda install intel/win-64::ipython==6.3.1=py36_3
Collecting package metadata: done
Solving environment: /
The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully
The following packages are causing the inconsistency:

  - intel/win-64::ipython==6.3.1=py36_3
  - intel/win-64::prompt_toolkit==1.0.15=py36_2
done

## Package Plan ##

  environment location: c:\conda

  added / updated specs:
    - ipython


The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

  jedi               intel/win-64::jedi-0.12.0-py36_2
  parso              intel/win-64::parso-0.2.0-py36_2
  pygments           intel/win-64::pygments-2.2.0-py36_5
  wcwidth            intel/win-64::wcwidth-0.1.7-py36_6


Proceed ([y]/n)? y

Preparing transaction: done
Verifying transaction: done
Executing transaction: done

(and you would have to repeat for all the packages)

---

My “Shortcut”

Alternatively, cook up an (ugly) one-liner (this should work for Windows as well as other platforms)

> Note: by "ORIGINAL_COMMAND", I'm referring to any command that gives you the error message (without any other side-effects, ideally)

<ORIGINAL_COMMAND> 2>&1 | python -c "import sys,re,conda.cli; conda.cli.main('conda','install','-y',*re.findall(r'^\s*-\s*(\S+)$',sys.stdin.read(),re.MULTILINE))"

Expanding the above one-liner:

from re import findall, MULTILINE
from sys import stdin
from conda.cli import main

main(
    "conda", "install", "-y",
    "--force",  # Maybe add a '--force'/'--force-reinstall' (I didn't add it for the one-liner above)
    *findall(r"^\s*-\s*(\S+)$", stdin.read(), MULTILINE)  # Here are the offenders
)

The command conda install -c anaconda anaconda did the trick for me. For my setup, I need to specify the channel otherwise it would not work. After running the command in the terminal, I was prompted to update a list of packages that was found to be inconsistent. Without this step, I was not able to install or update any packages with conda install <package_name> or conda update <package_name respectively.

What worked for me was to

`conda remove <offending_packagename>`, 
`conda update --all` 

and then finally

`conda install <offending_packagename>`.

I was getting an environment is inconsistent error when I tried to update my base conda environment. I'm using miniconda. Unfortunately, none of the answers above worked for me.

What did work for me was:

conda activate base
conda install conda --force-reinstall
conda install conda --force-reinstall
conda update --all

(Yes, for some reason it was necessary to run conda install conda --force-reinstall twice!)

I had this problem for ages. The conda install anaconda might work, but it takes just way too long -- more than 24 hours on my machine.

Here is a solution that worked for me in under 5 minutes:

1. Remove all the unneeded packages -- being careful to leave the ones that are essential for conda to operate.
2. Then, use conda install anaconda.

But how?? there is a lot of them!

This is what I have done:

1. Make a fresh envinroment with python, fairly bare-bone. then, list the packages in there:

conda create -n fresh python

conda activate fresh

conda list

Save the output, you will need it. 1b. go back to the base envinroment:

conda deactivate

2. use the following snippet to generate a conda command that will remove all the inconsistent packages:

(good packages are)

exclusion_text = '''
_libgcc_mutex             0.1                        main  
_openmp_mutex             4.5                       1_gnu  
anyio                     2.2.0            py39h06a4308_1  
argon2-cffi               20.1.0           py39h27cfd23_1  
async_generator           1.10               pyhd3eb1b0_0  
...

... and more! get this from a good environment.

Note the usage of triple quotes (''') to use a multiline-string in python.

bad_packages_text = '''
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/main/linux-64/networkx-2.1-py36_0.tar.bz2/linux-64::networkx==2.1=py36_0
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/main/linux-64/spyder-3.2.6-> py36_0.tar.bz2/linux-64::spyder==3.2.6=py36_0
py36h4c697fb_0.tar.bz2/linux-64::jdcal==1.3=py36h4c697fb_0
 - defaults/noarch::jupyterlab_server==1.1.4=py_0
 - defaults/linux-64::argh==0.26.2=py37_0
... 

... and more! get this by copy-pasting the "The following packages are causing the inconsistency." message.

then, in python, process this:

exclusions = [line.split(' ')[0] for line in exclusion_text_lines if line !='']
bad_packages_lines = bad_packages_text.split('\n')
bad_packages = [line.split('::')[1].split('==')[0] for line in bad_packages_lines if line!='']
exclusions.append('conda') # make sure!
exclusions.append('tqdm')

finally, construct the life-saving command:

command_line = 'conda remove '
for bad_package in bad_packages:
    if bad_package not in exclusions:
        command_line = f'{command_line} {bad_package}'
command_line   

Since in solving the environment, all the packages on the remove list can be ignored, conda no longer needs to consider their versions, and the process is fast.

Possibly someone can refactor this method to make it easier -- or better yet, upgrade conda to enable quick reset base command.

This worked for me -- it took me longer to write this post than to execute these actions.

Good luck!

conda install anaconda
conda clean --all
conda update --all

fix the problem for me

You probably installed anaconda with python 2.7 but later you used python 3.x. Thus, you are getting an error message. In my case, I solved the problem by activating anaconda with python 2.7:

conda create --name py2 python=2.7

To solve this message I had to run conda update --all in my base environment three times after each other. Every time the number of inconsistent packages decreased until conda said:

> # All requested packages already installed.

I'm on macOS Big Sur 11.6 using conda version 4.10.3.

To those of us who have miniconda and can't/don't want to install anaconda: the accepted answer works when adapted.

1. conda install conda
2. conda update --all

Would have commented, but my rep is too low.

In my case, none of the above worked. But this did the trick in less than a minute:

1- I downloaded again the lastest installer (miniconda in my case)

2- Run the installer with the -u option:

bash Miniconda3-py39_xxxx-Linux-x86_64.sh -u

3- Answer yes to all questions and let the installer finish

4- Then I could run conda update conda -all

Hope this helps...

Try to have a look to the environment management https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html

By using something along the lines

conda create --name astra python=3.5
conda activate astra
conda install -c astra-toolbox astra-toolbox

You can see that you can even specify target python version. Now play with the new packages installed. When unsatisfied, you can always do

conda deactivate
conda env remove -n astra

If you install everything to the base env and something gets broken, then probably better is not to install conda at all and go with default python managing it through pip.