Conda environment cannot be activated

[speedhawk]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open reports and couldn't find a duplicate

What happened?

I used the command below to activate the created conda environment on Google Colab:

!conda activate minigpt4

And this is the error thrown:

usage: conda
       [-h]
       [--no-plugins]
       [-V]
       COMMAND
       ...
conda: error: argument COMMAND: invalid choice: 'activate' (choose from 'clean', 'compare', 'config', 'create', 'info', 'init', 'install', 'list', 'notices', 'package', 'remove', 'uninstall', 'rename', 'run', 'search', 'update', 'upgrade', 'doctor', 'env')

Conda Info

active environment : None
       user config file : /root/.condarc
 populated config files : 
          conda version : 23.7.3
    conda-build version : not installed
         python version : 3.9.17.final.0
       virtual packages : __archspec=1=x86_64
                          __cuda=12.0=0
                          __glibc=2.35=0
                          __linux=5.15.109=0
                          __unix=0=0
       base environment : /usr/local  (writable)
      conda av data dir : /usr/local/etc/conda
  conda av metadata url : None
           channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/linux-64
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/linux-64
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
          package cache : /usr/local/pkgs
                          /root/.conda/pkgs
       envs directories : /usr/local/envs
                          /root/.conda/envs
               platform : linux-64
             user-agent : conda/23.7.3 requests/2.31.0 CPython/3.9.17 Linux/5.15.109+ ubuntu/22.04.2 glibc/2.35
                UID:GID : 0:0
             netrc file : None
           offline mode : False

Conda Config

==> cmd_line <==
debug: False
json: False

Conda list

# packages in environment at /usr/local:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
_libgcc_mutex             0.1                        main    defaults
_openmp_mutex             5.1                       1_gnu    defaults
asn1crypto                1.5.1            py39h06a4308_0    defaults
boltons                   23.0.0           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
brotlipy                  0.7.0           py39h27cfd23_1003    defaults
ca-certificates           2023.05.30           h06a4308_0    defaults
certifi                   2023.7.22        py39h06a4308_0    defaults
cffi                      1.15.1           py39h5eee18b_3    defaults
chardet                   4.0.0           py39h06a4308_1003    defaults
charset-normalizer        2.0.4              pyhd3eb1b0_0    defaults
conda                     23.7.3           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
conda-env                 2.6.0                h36134e3_1    defaults
conda-package-handling    2.2.0            py39h06a4308_0    defaults
conda-package-streaming   0.9.0            py39h06a4308_0    defaults
cryptography              41.0.2           py39h22a60cf_0    defaults
idna                      3.4              py39h06a4308_0    defaults
jsonpatch                 1.32               pyhd3eb1b0_0    defaults
jsonpointer               2.1                pyhd3eb1b0_0    defaults
ld_impl_linux-64          2.38                 h1181459_1    defaults
libedit                   3.1.20170329         h6b74fdf_2    defaults
libffi                    3.4.4                h6a678d5_0    defaults
libgcc-ng                 11.2.0               h1234567_1    defaults
libgomp                   11.2.0               h1234567_1    defaults
libstdcxx-ng              11.2.0               h1234567_1    defaults
ncurses                   6.4                  h6a678d5_0    defaults
openssl                   3.0.10               h7f8727e_1    defaults
packaging                 23.0             py39h06a4308_0    defaults
pip                       23.2.1           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
pluggy                    1.0.0            py39h06a4308_1    defaults
pycosat                   0.6.4            py39h5eee18b_0    defaults
pycparser                 2.21               pyhd3eb1b0_0    defaults
pyopenssl                 23.2.0           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
pysocks                   1.7.1            py39h06a4308_0    defaults
python                    3.9.17               h955ad1f_0    defaults
readline                  8.2                  h5eee18b_0    defaults
requests                  2.31.0           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
ruamel.yaml               0.17.21          py39h5eee18b_0    defaults
ruamel.yaml.clib          0.2.6            py39h7f8727e_0    defaults
ruamel_yaml               0.17.21          py39h5eee18b_0    defaults
setuptools                68.0.0           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
six                       1.16.0             pyhd3eb1b0_1    defaults
sqlite                    3.41.2               h5eee18b_0    defaults
tk                        8.6.12               h1ccaba5_0    defaults
toolz                     0.12.0           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
tqdm                      4.65.0           py39hb070fc8_0    defaults
tzdata                    2023c                h04d1e81_0    defaults
urllib3                   1.26.16          py39h06a4308_0    defaults
wheel                     0.38.4           py39h06a4308_0    defaults
xz                        5.4.2                h5eee18b_0    defaults
yaml                      0.1.7                had09818_2    defaults
zlib                      1.2.13               h5eee18b_0    defaults
zstandard                 0.19.0           py39h5eee18b_0    defaults

Additional Context

I installed conda on Google Colab based on the tutorial below:
https://towardsdatascience.com/conda-google-colab-75f7c867a522
Considering this source has been sent more than 3 years ago, I changed some values (such as changed python verion 3.6 to 3.9 and the conda version from 4.5.4 to 23.5.1-0) but this error still appears.

[dngrrng]

Had the same issue.

Worked after a conda init zsh

[travishathaway]

What @dngrrng suggested makes sense. For conda activate to work, you first need to run the conda init command.

conda activate is actually a shell function. When you run conda init, it adds this function definition to all applicable shell rc files.

@speedhawk, if this works for you, please let us know so we can close this issue.

[madbeamer]

For people using homebrew to install anaconda (brew install --cask anaconda) instead of manually adding conda to PATH run /(your conda installation path)/bin/conda init zsh which on apple silicon (M1/M2) is /opt/homebrew/anaconda3/bin/conda init zsh. This adds conda to your PATH in .zshrc and makes sure that you can now use conda and activate conda environments.

[travishathaway]

I am closing this issue now because there has been several solutions posted.

[MuvvaThriveni]

C:\Users\SRKREC\Documents\Langchain\PDF_CHAT_Gemini>conda activate venv/

usage: conda-script.py [-h] [--no-plugins] [-V] COMMAND ...
conda-script.py: error: argument COMMAND: invalid choice: 'activate' (choose from 'clean', 'compare', 'config', 'create', 'info', 'init', 'install', 'list', 'notices', 'package', 'remove', 'uninstall', 'rename', 'run', 'search', 'update', 'upgrade', 'build', 'content-trust', 'convert', 'debug', 'develop', 'doctor', 'index', 'inspect', 'metapackage', 'render', 'skeleton', 'server', 'pack', 'token', 'env', 'verify', 'repo')

can any one help me to fix above bug .
I am getting this while activating environment

[anasid01]

same here, not able to activate environments using cmd

[Guo-SY]

When I run the !conda init zsh, I get the errors:

CondaError: Run 'conda init' before 'conda activate'