Libarchive error trying to run conda commands

[grallewellyn]

Somehow is it becoming corrupt or something or related to the conda version? I create a new workspace and get

(base) root@workspacexhlnnq3hes11z537:~# conda --version
conda 23.7.4

then successfully run conda env update -n base --file /projects/r_env.ymlHowever, if I run conda env update -n base --file /projects/r_env.yml again I get the libarchive error and the conda version is 23.9.0 I am testing this with 'mas.maap-project.org/root/maap-workspaces/jupyterlab3/vanilla:v3.1.1' And there is similar behavior in DIT which is the new release

r_env.yml is

name: base
channels:
  - conda-forge
  - defaults
dependencies:
  - r-rcurl
  - r-devtools
  - r-rgeos
  - r-raster
  - r-rgdal
  - r-geosphere
  - r-RColorBrewer 
  - r-gdalUtils
  - r-snow 
  - r-plyr
  - r-maptools
  - r-scales
  - r-sf
  - r-sp
  - r-foreign
  - r-geojsonio
  - r-aws.s3
  - r-terra
  - r-aws.ec2metadata

See more information in #uwg on MAAP slack

[anilnatha]

The resolution for the libarchive error was to create custom conda environments for each our workspaces. The libarchive error was occurring due to changes that were being applied to the base conda env. We took this action after learning that making changes to the base conda env is not advised and leads to issues like what we experienced.