Can I install Anaconda over a broken Anaconda install on MacOS?

Question

I want to run jupyter notebook, but the Mac I'm on has a messed up Anaconda environment. The old owner uninstalled some packages that I'd like to use-- jupyter notebook, pyzmq, etc. I want to use jupyter notebook, but after I tried to reinstall those packages manually using:

pip install jupyter
pip install pyzmq

I get errors when I run: jupyter notebook:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "//anaconda/bin/jupyter-notebook", line 4, in <module> import notebook.notebookapp
  File "//anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/notebook/notebookapp.py", line 40, in <module> ioloop.install()
  File "//anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/zmq/eventloop/ioloop.py", line 210, in install assert (not ioloop.IOLoop.initialized()) or \
AttributeError: type object 'IOLoop' has no attribute 'initialized'

Can I just reinstall Anaconda again (or do I have to uninstall anaconda somehow and install over a clean system)?

It's probably safest to uninstall and reinstall. But uninstalling is pretty easy. — abarnert
Also, while you're reinstalling, do you actually need to use Python 2.7? It's only a year and a half from going out of support, and it's already a second-class citizen with Jupyter/IPython and some other packages, so reinstall time may be a good time to migrate. — abarnert
Thanks @abarnert -- yes, I do need Python 2.7 for now, working with older code on an old computer. ;) — anjchang

Unknown Unknown · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-01T05:39:01

This answers in this post will address your issue

But, if you want to start over, I would suggest removing anaconda completely and then installing miniconda.

After you've installed miniconda, you can use:
conda install jupyter
conda install pyzmq
conda install WHATEVER_PACKAGE

Can I install Anaconda over a broken Anaconda install on MacOS?

1 Answers