Quarto check: Error NotFound CSS file

[nkhuw]

Hi everyone. I just can't get quarto to work, I can't even get past this quarto check error:

$ quarto check

[>] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.2.269
      Path: C:\Users\jconn\AppData\Local\Programs\Quarto\bin
      CodePage: 1252

[>] Checking basic markdown render....OK

ERROR: NotFound: The system cannot find the file specified. (os error 2), remove 'C:\Users\jconn\AppData\Local\quarto\sass\397ef2e52d54cf686e4908b90039e9db.css'

When I look in that folder there are no CSS files.
I am on Windows 11. I've tried uninstalling everything (R, RStudio, quarto) and reinstalling again, but same every time. I've searched forums and I don't seem to find anyone else encountering this error.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. Jonathan

[technocrat]

@nkhuw

C:\Users\jconn\AppData\Local\quarto\sass\397ef2e52d54cf686e4908b90039e9db.css

Check this with whatever file browser Win uses these days (I’ve been away a very long time) to see if it exists. If it does not create an empty file by that name and try again, on the theory that the error message indicated that something choked trying to remove it.

[nkhuw]

Thank you for the suggestion. I've done as you said and created (an empty) CSS file at that location. Unfortunately it seems to crash at the same place, though the message is now slightly abrreviated:

ERROR: NotFound: The system cannot find the file specified. (os error 2)

In other words, it no longer asks to remove that named file.

@technocrat wondered what browser windows employs. I'm not sure if this answers the question or not, but when I do quarto tools check I get:

quarto tools check
[>] Inspecting tools

Tool         Status                    Installed     Latest
chromium     Up to date                869685        869685
tinytex      External Installation     ---           v2022.11

I should mention that I installed chromium via quarto tools install chromium (and I have system-wide chrome as my default browser). Could this mean that quarto is perhaps having trouble locating it now (although as discussed at this issue, the errors reported there seem quite different).

As mentioned, I tried to uninstall R, Rstudio and Quarto (also deleting content of any remaining folders) and then I re-installed (more than once). I do have anaconda python installed, but I'm not sure that's relevant. The thing is quarto worked well when I first installed it maybe 3 months ago... but somewhere in between updates things seem to have broken like this.

Thanks again, Any other suggestions?

[technocrat]

On my Ubuntu setup there is a quarto suite I installed for the CLI and seems to be a competing set installed in a different location as part of the R installation of the quarto package. I needed to alias the CLI to free the R version to do its thing. Might the Win equivalent happened with your installation?

[nkhuw]

I appreciate your suggestion. It is possible that something like that might have happened ... I'll see if I can figure out the installation locations and perhaps alias or instead do a deeper uninstall of all installations and start again. It's been frustrating because I really want to use quarto!

[technocrat]

If you have a standalone install of quarto, you can always use it from the command line. I find it speed things up for me because I'm not obsession over the formatting from paragraph-to-paragraph and chunk-to-chunk.

[cderv]

@nkhuw How did you installed Quarto ?

Is this still happening with latest 1.2.280 ?

If so, is this happening with pre-release 1.3 ?

Quarto - Download Quarto

Thank you !

[nkhuw]

Thank you very much for following up. I installed quarto from the download page (I'm on Windows 64 so it's a .msi install). I've just tried quarto-1.2.280-win.msi and also the pre-release quarto-1.3.56-win.msi. In each case I first uninstalled quarto using the windows uninstaller and also rebooted after install.

Unfortunately, neither installation works. With 1.2.280 I still get the " cannot find the file specified" error from quarto check

ERROR: NotFound: The system cannot find the file specified. (os error 2), remove 'C:\Users\jconn\AppData\Local\quarto\sass\397ef2e52d54cf686e4908b90039e9db.css'

With the 1.3.56 installation it actually fails earlier

(base) PS C:\Users\jconn> quarto check

[>] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 2.19.2: OK
ERROR: Theme file compilation failed:
(base) PS C:\Users\jconn>

Any other suggestions welcome... Are there any other windows users out there experiencing something similar? Perhaps it's time for a fresh windows reinstall...

thanks again

[cderv]

@nkhuw

Any other suggestions welcome... Are there any other windows users out there experiencing something similar? Perhaps it's time for a fresh windows reinstall...

I don't think so... You should look in issue in Quarto repo and open a new one if not already.
There is either an issue or a specific configuration in your environment that creates this;
Found a few occurences that you could check Search · repo:quarto-dev/quarto-cli "NotFound: The system cannot find the file specified." · GitHub

I believe you have access right on your computer. Maybe there is an issue with a malware or antivirus scanning software which falsy flag one of the program used.