'error: Error -5 while decompressing data: incomplete or truncated stream' when installing pip package

Question

I'm having the following error when running pip install Pillow==2.9.0 in a virtualenv: error: Error -5 while decompressing data: incomplete or truncated stream

Other packages install/uninstall fine, it just seems to affects Pillow 2.9.0. It doesn't seem to matter what virtualenv I'm in (or not).

Downloading a source tarball and installing from that worked, but since this is on a build server that's not an ideal workaround as I want to rely on pip install -r requirements.txt

Versions:

• pip --version: pip 7.1.0 from /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages (python 2.7)
• python --version: Python 2.7.10

The full traceback is:

Collecting Pillow==2.9.0
/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/requests/packages/urllib3/util/ssl_.py:90: InsecurePlatformWarning: A true SSLContext object is not available. This prevents urllib3 from configuring SSL appropriately and may cause certain SSL connections to fail. For more information, see https://urllib3.readthedocs.org/en/latest/security.html#insecureplatformwarning.
  InsecurePlatformWarning
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 223, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 282, in run
    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 334, in prepare_files
    functools.partial(self._prepare_file, finder))
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 321, in _walk_req_to_install
    more_reqs = handler(req_to_install)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 491, in _prepare_file
    session=self.session)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/download.py", line 825, in unpack_url
    session,
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/download.py", line 673, in unpack_http_url
    from_path, content_type = _download_http_url(link, session, temp_dir)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/download.py", line 857, in _download_http_url
    stream=True,
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/requests/sessions.py", line 477, in get
    return self.request('GET', url, **kwargs)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/download.py", line 373, in request
    return super(PipSession, self).request(method, url, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/requests/sessions.py", line 465, in request
    resp = self.send(prep, **send_kwargs)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/requests/sessions.py", line 573, in send
    r = adapter.send(request, **kwargs)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/cachecontrol/adapter.py", line 36, in send
    cached_response = self.controller.cached_request(request)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/cachecontrol/controller.py", line 102, in cached_request
    resp = self.serializer.loads(request, self.cache.get(cache_url))
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/cachecontrol/serialize.py", line 108, in loads
    return getattr(self, "_loads_v{0}".format(ver))(request, data)
  File "/mnt/jenkins/jobA/workspace/.pyenv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/_vendor/cachecontrol/serialize.py", line 164, in _loads_v2
    cached = json.loads(zlib.decompress(data).decode("utf8"))
error: Error -5 while decompressing data: incomplete or truncated stream

Answer 1

Turns out that there was a corrupt entry in pip's local cache (located in my case, and by default I believe, in ~/.cache/pip).

I tested that by trying pip install --no-cache-dir Pillow==2.9.0 and lo and behold, it worked.

To confirm it was the cache, I ran:

pip uninstall Pillow
rm -rf ~/.cache/pip/*
pip install Pillow==2.9.0

which succeeded where it had failed before.

I don't know how there came to be a problem with the cache, but my guess is that pip got interrupted mid-download causing the cached data for Pillow to be corrupted