qlever start Could not open file "wikidata.meta-data.json"

[WolfgangFahl]

see also #39

https://wiki.bitplan.com/index.php/Wikidata_Import_2025-12-07 seems to fail based on this and
https://qlever.wikidata.dbis.rwth-aachen.de/

is down making e.g. the snapquery CI fail ...

i assume i forgot to to a

pip install -U qlever 

in due time since the version changed again and there seems to be no consistency version check which might lead to such frustrations.
It would be great if things would get more stable and reliable so that i can start doing automated wikidata imports which has unfortunately not been possible this year yet.

[WolfgangFahl]

as a workaround i have dialed back to https://wiki.bitplan.com/index.php/Wikidata_Import_2025-10-30

[WolfgangFahl]

The actual error seems to be

2025-12-07 07:04:52.312 - ERROR: Creating the index for QLever failed with the following exception:  Parse error at byte position 60260067606: Unterminated string literal
The next 500 bytes are:
"High production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by mate

based on a download

[latest-all.json.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.json.bz2)                                04-Dec-2025 08:59         99055279543
[latest-all.json.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.json.gz)                                 04-Dec-2025 02:38        150322311401
[latest-all.nt.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.nt.bz2)                                  05-Dec-2025 00:10        188659759909
[latest-all.nt.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.nt.gz)                                   04-Dec-2025 10:04        244383894419
[latest-all.ttl.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.ttl.bz2)                                 04-Dec-2025 13:45        120810121675
[latest-all.ttl.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.ttl.gz)                                  04-Dec-2025 02:38        148269962648
[latest-lexemes.json.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.json.bz2)                            03-Dec-2025 03:54           417621131
[latest-lexemes.json.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.json.gz)                             03-Dec-2025 03:53           569621183
[latest-lexemes.nt.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.nt.bz2)                              05-Dec-2025 23:42          1055243920
[latest-lexemes.nt.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.nt.gz)                               05-Dec-2025 23:36          1393861496
[latest-lexemes.ttl.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.ttl.bz2)                             05-Dec-2025 23:37           601425580
[latest-lexemes.ttl.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.ttl.gz)                              05-Dec-2025 23:31           756788057
[latest-truthy.nt.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-truthy.nt.bz2)                               05-Dec-2025 19:25         42029652884
[latest-truthy.nt.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-truthy.nt.gz)                                05-Dec-2025 16:20         69316176017

[hannahbast]

@WolfgangFahl

1. Doing fully automated Wikidata rebuilds is trivial with a one-liner, we have been doing that for years
2. The latest version of the qlever CLI and the adfreiburg/qlever Docker image are always compatible [unless we make a mistake, which can happen but should be the exception]
3. You can also use slightly older versions of both of which you know that they work together

You are making life harder for yourself because you are using your own scripts. Consider contributing to the existing codebase instead, it makes much more sense

That being said, we will very soon have releases, with consistent version numbers for the qlever CLI and adfreiburg/qlever. Probably before Christmas

[WolfgangFahl]

@hannahbast i have to disagree.
You are making life harder for yourself because you are using your own scripts.

This is IMHO not the reason. My scripts only adds to the qlever script by managing e.g. disk space and doing automatic upgrades of the tools. Otherwise the qlever script is fully used - this was a change i already did months ago. The current problem seems to have deeper roots. It would be great if those get investigated.

Consider contributing to the existing codebase instead, it makes much more sense

You bet that i try hard ... it is part of the frustration i often feel how difficult things get - the devil is unfortunately in the details.

[WolfgangFahl]

The retry at https://wiki.bitplan.com/index.php/Wikidata_Import_2025-12-10 is underway sill using the December 5 dumps. Let's see whether that works

[hannahbast]

@WolfgangFahl Let's start with the fully automated Wikidata builds. What is wrong with the following?

qlever setup-config wikidata && qlever get-data && qlever index 

[WolfgangFahl]

@hannahbast That is exactly my question and the reason i opened this ticket. qlv creates:

cat qlever_index.sh 
#!/bin/bash
base="/hd/delta/qlever/wikidata_20251210"
cd $base
echo "Starting QLever indexing process at $(date)"
#qlever setup-config wikidata
#qlever get-data
qlever index
qlever start
echo "QLever indexing process completed at $(date)"

and both attempts of the past two weeks failed or needed retries

[WolfgangFahl]

i tried to switch the current attempt on after the retry and Description is now no index name specified

is this taken from the ui? The ui was not restarted by me yet since i would have to copy the setup instead i simply stopped the older backend and started the newer

[hannahbast]

@WolfgangFahl And what exactly failed? Please provide the exact command or command sequence you executed (not some script from you, which we don't know) and what the error message was

[WolfgangFahl]

Again your assumption i am doing something non standard seems to be wrong. The info i have is all above in the ticket. I do not hide any information. The log had

2025-12-07 07:04:52.312 - ERROR: Creating the index for QLever failed with the following exception:  Parse error at byte position 60260067606: Unterminated string literal
The next 500 bytes are:
"High production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by mate

everything else seems to have been a followup problem. In the meantime i do not have the full logs any more but i hope the snippet shows that there was something wrong in the input.

[hannahbast]

@WolfgangFahl OK, I understand the error message, but to help you, we need to understand what exactly you did before that. And if that something involves one of your scripts, you first have to reproduce the error without the script. Otherwise, we cannot know whether the problem was with your setup, or with the download process, or with QLever

[WolfgangFahl]

@hannahbast be assured this has nothing to with my qlv script. The script is readly available for inspection since 10 month. All it does is allow handling disk space and start a screen session. The screen.log file would have the detailed information. See below for a successful example

cat screen.log | grep -v average
Starting QLever indexing process at Thu Oct 30 11:45:22 AM CET 2025

To enable autocompletion, run the following command, and consider adding it to your `.bashrc` or `.zshrc`:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete qlever)" && export QLEVER_ARGCOMPLETE_ENABLED=1


Command: setup-config

cat /home/wf/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/qlever/Qleverfiles/Qleverfile.wikidata | sed -E 's/(^ACCESS_TOKEN.*)/\1_X6ATEtnTDWbU/'> Qleverfile

Created Qleverfile for config "wikidata" in current directory


To enable autocompletion, run the following command, and consider adding it to your `.bashrc` or `.zshrc`:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete qlever)" && export QLEVER_ARGCOMPLETE_ENABLED=1


Command: get-data

curl -LRC - -O https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.ttl.bz2 -O https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.ttl.bz2 2>&1 | tee wikidata.download-log.txt && curl -sL https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/dcatap.rdf | docker run -i --rm -v $(pwd):/data stain/jena riot --syntax=RDF/XML --output=NT /dev/stdin > dcatap.nt

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  111G  100  111G    0     0  4418k      0  7:22:53  7:22:53 --:--:-- 4462k
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  563M  100  563M    0     0  4274k      0  0:02:14  0:02:14 --:--:-- 4126k

Download successful, total file size: 120,814,256,748 bytes

To enable autocompletion, run the following command, and consider adding it to your `.bashrc` or `.zshrc`:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete qlever)" && export QLEVER_ARGCOMPLETE_ENABLED=1


Command: index

echo '{ "languages-internal": [], "prefixes-external": [""], "locale": { "language": "en", "country": "US", "ignore-punctuation": true }, "ascii-prefixes-only": true, "num-triples-per-batch": 5000000 }' > wikidata.settings.json
docker run --rm -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro -v $(pwd):/index -w /index --name qlever.index.wikidata --init --entrypoint bash adfreiburg/qlever -c 'ulimit -Sn 500000 && IndexBuilderMain -i wikidata -s wikidata.settings.json --vocabulary-type on-disk-compressed -f <(lbzcat -n 4 latest-all.ttl.bz2) -g - -F ttl -p true -f <(lbzcat -n 1 latest-lexemes.ttl.bz2) -g - -F ttl -p false -f <(cat dcatap.nt) -g - -F nt -p false --stxxl-memory 10G | tee wikidata.index-log.txt'

2025-10-30 19:10:33.887 - INFO: QLever IndexBuilder, compiled on Mon Oct 27 12:40:21 UTC 2025 using git hash 3f7a4c
2025-10-30 19:10:33.888 - INFO: You specified "locale = en_US" and "ignore-punctuation = 1"
2025-10-30 19:10:33.888 - INFO: You specified "ascii-prefixes-only = true", which enables faster parsing for well-behaved TTL files
2025-10-30 19:10:33.888 - INFO: You specified "num-triples-per-batch = 5,000,000", choose a lower value if the index builder runs out of memory
2025-10-30 19:10:33.888 - INFO: By default, integers that cannot be represented by QLever will throw an exception
2025-10-30 19:10:33.888 - INFO: Processing triples from 3 input streams ...
2025-10-30 19:10:33.888 - INFO: Parsing input triples and creating partial vocabularies, one per batch ...
2025-10-30 22:24:18.932 - INFO: Number of triples created (including QLever-internal ones): 33,154,760,032 [may contain duplicates]
2025-10-30 22:24:18.932 - INFO: Number of partial vocabularies created: 4,155
2025-10-30 22:24:18.932 - INFO: Merging partial vocabularies ...
2025-10-30 22:24:24.908 - WARN: Total vocabulary order violated for "◌𖿰"@mul and "◌𞥊"@en
2025-10-30 22:24:24.908 - WARN: Total vocabulary order violated for "◌𖿱"@mul and "◌𞥉"@en
2025-10-30 22:28:12.853 - WARN: Total vocabulary order violated for "Category:Khmer terms spelled with ◌៉"@en and "Category:Khmer terms spelled with ◌៌"@en
2025-10-30 22:28:14.537 - WARN: Total vocabulary order violated for "Category:帶「◌៉」的高棉語詞"@zh and "Category:帶「◌៌」的高棉語詞"@zh
2025-10-30 22:28:14.537 - WARN: Total vocabulary order violated for "Category:帶◌៉的高棉語詞"@zh and "Category:帶◌៌的高棉語詞"@zh
2025-10-30 23:05:25.228 - INFO: Finished writing compressed internal vocabulary, size = 75.3 GB [uncompressed = 238.5 GB, ratio = 31%]
2025-10-30 23:05:25.234 - INFO: Number of words in external vocabulary: 3,735,260,240
2025-10-30 23:05:50.730 - INFO: Converting triples from local IDs to global IDs ...
2025-10-30 23:37:48.467 - INFO: Creating permutations SPO and SOP ...
2025-10-31 00:40:34.775 - INFO: Number of unique elements: 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 00:40:35.784 - INFO: Statistics for SPO: #relations = 2,292,528,341, #blocks = 445,661, #triples = 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 00:40:35.785 - INFO: Statistics for SOP: #relations = 2,292,528,341, #blocks = 445,661, #triples = 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 00:40:48.111 - INFO: Number of distinct patterns: 10,476,546
2025-10-31 00:40:48.111 - INFO: Number of subjects with pattern: 2,292,528,341 [all]
2025-10-31 00:40:48.111 - INFO: Total number of distinct subject-predicate pairs: 12,768,805,607
2025-10-31 00:40:48.111 - INFO: Average number of predicates per subject: 5.6
2025-10-31 00:40:48.111 - INFO: Average number of subjects per predicate: 208,192
2025-10-31 00:40:58.598 - INFO: Creating permutations OSP and OPS ...
2025-10-31 02:01:08.059 - INFO: Statistics for OSP: #relations = 3,777,028,950, #blocks = 583,844, #triples = 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 02:01:08.059 - INFO: Statistics for OPS: #relations = 3,777,028,950, #blocks = 583,844, #triples = 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 02:01:18.357 - INFO: Adding 2,292,528,341 triples to the POS and PSO permutation for the internal `ql:has-pattern` ...
2025-10-31 02:04:29.158 - INFO: Creating permutations PSO and POS ...
2025-10-31 02:39:31.087 - INFO: Number of unique elements: 9,196,135,752
2025-10-31 02:39:31.666 - INFO: Statistics for PSO: #relations = 25,346, #blocks = 296,690, #triples = 9,196,135,752
2025-10-31 02:39:31.666 - INFO: Statistics for POS: #relations = 25,346, #blocks = 296,690, #triples = 9,196,135,752
2025-10-31 02:39:34.110 - INFO: Creating permutations PSO and POS ...
2025-10-31 04:08:50.033 - INFO: Statistics for PSO: #relations = 61,332, #blocks = 672,217, #triples = 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 04:08:50.034 - INFO: Statistics for POS: #relations = 61,332, #blocks = 672,217, #triples = 20,868,751,519
2025-10-31 04:09:02.976 - INFO: Index build completed


To enable autocompletion, run the following command, and consider adding it to your `.bashrc` or `.zshrc`:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete qlever)" && export QLEVER_ARGCOMPLETE_ENABLED=1


Command: start

docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro -v $(pwd):/index -p 7001:7001 -w /index --name qlever.server.wikidata --init --entrypoint bash adfreiburg/qlever -c 'ServerMain -i wikidata -j 8 -p 7001 -m 20G -c 15G -e 5G -k 200 -s 600s -a wikidata_X6ATEtnTDWbU > wikidata.server-log.txt 2>&1'

QLever server already running on http://wikidata:7001

To kill the existing server, use `qlever stop` or `qlever start` with option --kill-existing-with-same-port`

Show all processes on this machine where the command line matches ^ServerMain.* -p *7001 using Python's psutil library

PID      USER     START    RSS COMMAND
2838397  wf       Oct30     5G ServerMain -i wikidata -j 8 -p 7001 -m 20G -c 15G -e 5G -k 200 -s 600s -a wikidata_2skVEGccHJeV

QLever indexing process completed at Fri Oct 31 04:09:08 AM CET 2025

It seems the error appeared in the index phase. given the log file is 4 MB i did not append it. With the grep -v trick above it seems possible to shorten it. It is a pitty i do not have the original log file anymore but the order of actions should have been exactly the same.

In the past the process e.g. failed when the download was not successful and an error message appeared in that phase. So i assume this issue is much more about the error handling then about the actual reason why the problem appeared in the first place.

[WolfgangFahl]

WDscholia/scholia#2760

shows what can go wrong

cat latest-all.ttl.bz2 
<html>
<head><title>404 Not Found</title></head>
<body>
<center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx/1.18.0</center>
</body>
</html>

i will work around by copying the files from the RWTH Server's latest working state
https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/

[latest-all.nt.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.nt.bz2)                                  11-Dec-2025 04:29                  90
[latest-all.nt.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.nt.gz)                                   10-Dec-2025 20:24                  89
[latest-all.ttl.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.ttl.bz2)                                 10-Dec-2025 20:14                  91
[latest-all.ttl.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-all.ttl.gz)                                  10-Dec-2025 17:23                  90
[latest-lexemes.json.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.json.bz2)                            10-Dec-2025 03:46                  91
[latest-lexemes.json.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.json.gz)                             10-Dec-2025 03:44                  90
[latest-lexemes.nt.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.nt.bz2)                              12-Dec-2025 23:48                  94
[latest-lexemes.nt.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.nt.gz)                               12-Dec-2025 23:43                  93
[latest-lexemes.ttl.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.ttl.bz2)                             12-Dec-2025 23:43                  95
[latest-lexemes.ttl.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-lexemes.ttl.gz)                              12-Dec-2025 23:42                  94
[latest-truthy.nt.bz2](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-truthy.nt.bz2)                               12-Dec-2025 21:44                  93
[latest-truthy.nt.gz](https://dumps.wikimedia.org/wikidatawiki/entities/latest-truthy.nt.gz)                                12-Dec-2025 18:35                  92