Failed to initialize TorchSharp

[bfdyoy]

Hello !

We're using TorchSharp to integrate various models into our application. We had no problems with it till now. On a client's environment the application fails to initialize TorchSharp. We've created a test app to see whether the problem still occurs, what's even worse is that we can't even reproduce this issue.

Their environment:

• OS Name : Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Standard
• OS Version: 10.0.17763 Build 17763

I've attached the test project that we used to try and solve the problem and also the its output.

Do you have any ideas why this could happen or what other things we can try ?

result_C.txt

It is called result_C because the app was copied on the C partition. The clients also tried running it on D and E with the same results.

TestTorchsharp.zip

Besides this, we used a brand new/clean windows server vm and didn't have this problem.

[NiklasGustafsson]

What the error message in the .txt file is saying is that it can't find the libtorch backend, so what I need to know is how the installation of your app goes about copying its dependencies to the client's environment. Basically, if you can provide a listing of the folder with all the binaries (CMD & dir is better than PS, IMO), I would be able to tell you what is missing.

[bfdyoy]

Hello !

Sorry, I've omitted this detail, we're compiling the project with Target Framework net7.0 and Target Runtime win-x64, here's the contents of the publish:

We've tried this test app on windows 10, 11, windows server 2019 datacenter and everything runs smoothly, but when using that specific version of windows server 2019 standard the library can't be initialized.

[NiklasGustafsson]

@bfdyoy -- nothing is missing, if you're executing on CPU. Those are all the binaries that you should need. I can't explain why it's different on that one system configuration. The error message is the generic error message that TorchSharp issues when it goes through and tries to dynamically load a backend. Usually, the problem is that there's a DLL missing in the binaries, but based on how dynamic library loading works, the errors we get from the system doesn't pinpoint the specific DLL that is wrong.

I would say that some DLL is failing to initialize based on something missing on the system, but that's just very odd. If you were doing CUDA, I'd advise you to look at the installed CUDA drivers, but that's not the case here.

[bfdyoy]

@NiklasGustafsson, We've downloaded the Windows Server Standard from here and installed a VM with only .NET Frameworks. Maybe you could take a look, you have attached above our test app.

Later edit: the test app fails with both Server Standard and Datacenter with latest version from microsoft.

Later edit2: We started comparing the two environments (one on which it fails to initialize torchsharp and one on which it succeeds) and we did the following:

1. We saw that .net core 6 is installed on the latter so we installed it too with no effect
2. SQL Server 2022 developer edition (no ssms) was installed too on the machine that fails to initialize torchsharp and now it works which is strange

This is an image with everything that's installed on the machine (the one that failed previously and now works), could it be that SQL Server comes with c++ redistributable ?

Later edit3: We tried to only install the c++ redistributable on another machine and now it works. Maybe it would be worth noting into the readme.md

[NiklasGustafsson]

@bfdyoy -- this is very interesting! I guess we haven't tested TorchSharp on a machine without the C++ redist. Thank you so much for tracking this down. It's the Visual C++ 2015-2019 redist that you installed, presumably?

[bfdyoy]

Hello ! It was tricky because the client already had the c++ redist but the following versions:

• Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x64) + (X86) - 11.0.51106
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable - x86 9.0.30729.17
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable - x86 9.0.30729.6161
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable (x64) - 12.0.40660
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x86 Redistributable - 10.0.40219

We've asked them to install ONLY the following c++ redist:

• Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 ( 14.36.32532 )
  And now everything works as supposed :) .

If you don't have anything more to add I think that the ticket can be closed.

[NiklasGustafsson]

I added a note to the README.md.