FailedPreconditionError: Attempting to use uninitialized in Tensorflow

Question

I am working through the TensorFlow tutorial, which uses a "weird" format to upload the data. I would like to use the NumPy or pandas format for the data, so that I can compare it with scikit-learn results.

I get the digit recognition data from Kaggle: https://www.kaggle.com/c/digit-recognizer/data.

Here the code from the TensorFlow tutorial (which works fine):

# Stuff from tensorflow tutorial 
import tensorflow as tf

sess = tf.InteractiveSession()

x = tf.placeholder("float", shape=[None, 784])
y_ = tf.placeholder("float", shape=[None, 10])

W = tf.Variable(tf.zeros([784, 10]))
b = tf.Variable(tf.zeros([10]))

y = tf.nn.softmax(tf.matmul(x, W) + b)

cross_entropy = -tf.reduce_sum(y_ * tf.log(y))

train_step = tf.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(0.01).minimize(cross_entropy)

Here I read the data, strip out the target variables and split the data into testing and training datasets (this all works fine):

# Read dataframe from training data
csvfile='train.csv'
from pandas import DataFrame, read_csv
df = read_csv(csvfile)

# Strip off the target data and make it a separate dataframe.
Target = df.label
del df["label"]

# Split data into training and testing sets
msk = np.random.rand(len(df)) < 0.8
dfTest = df[~msk]
TargetTest = Target[~msk]
df = df[msk]
Target = Target[msk]

# One hot encode the target
OHTarget=pd.get_dummies(Target)
OHTargetTest=pd.get_dummies(TargetTest)

Now, when I try to run the training step, I get a FailedPreconditionError:

for i in range(100):
    batch = np.array(df[i*50:i*50+50].values)
    batch = np.multiply(batch, 1.0 / 255.0)
    Target_batch = np.array(OHTarget[i*50:i*50+50].values)
    Target_batch = np.multiply(Target_batch, 1.0 / 255.0)
    train_step.run(feed_dict={x: batch, y_: Target_batch})

Here's the full error:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FailedPreconditionError                   Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-82-967faab7d494> in <module>()
      4     Target_batch = np.array(OHTarget[i*50:i*50+50].values)
      5     Target_batch = np.multiply(Target_batch, 1.0 / 255.0)
----> 6     train_step.run(feed_dict={x: batch, y_: Target_batch})

/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/framework/ops.pyc in run(self, feed_dict, session)
   1265         none, the default session will be used.
   1266     """
-> 1267     _run_using_default_session(self, feed_dict, self.graph, session)
   1268
   1269

/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/framework/ops.pyc in _run_using_default_session(operation, feed_dict, graph, session)
   2761                        "the operation's graph is different from the session's "
   2762                        "graph.")
-> 2763   session.run(operation, feed_dict)
   2764
   2765

/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/client/session.pyc in run(self, fetches, feed_dict)
    343
    344     # Run request and get response.
--> 345     results = self._do_run(target_list, unique_fetch_targets, feed_dict_string)
    346
    347     # User may have fetched the same tensor multiple times, but we

/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/client/session.pyc in _do_run(self, target_list, fetch_list, feed_dict)
    417         # pylint: disable=protected-access
    418         raise errors._make_specific_exception(node_def, op, e.error_message,
--> 419                                               e.code)
    420         # pylint: enable=protected-access
    421       raise e_type, e_value, e_traceback

FailedPreconditionError: Attempting to use uninitialized value Variable_1
     [[Node: gradients/add_grad/Shape_1 = Shape[T=DT_FLOAT, _device="/job:localhost/replica:0/task:0/cpu:0"](Variable_1)]]
Caused by op u'gradients/add_grad/Shape_1', defined at:
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    ...........

...which was originally created as op u'add', defined at:
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 162, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
[elided 17 identical lines from previous traceback]
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py", line 3066, in run_code
    exec(code_obj, self.user_global_ns, self.user_ns)
  File "<ipython-input-45-59183d86e462>", line 1, in <module>
    y = tf.nn.softmax(tf.matmul(x,W) + b)
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/ops/math_ops.py", line 403, in binary_op_wrapper
    return func(x, y, name=name)
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/ops/gen_math_ops.py", line 44, in add
    return _op_def_lib.apply_op("Add", x=x, y=y, name=name)
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/ops/op_def_library.py", line 633, in apply_op
    op_def=op_def)
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/framework/ops.py", line 1710, in create_op
    original_op=self._default_original_op, op_def=op_def)
  File "/Users/user32/anaconda/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tensorflow/python/framework/ops.py", line 988, in __init__
    self._traceback = _extract_stack()

Any ideas as to how I can fix this?

Answer 1

The FailedPreconditionError arises because the program is attempting to read a variable (named "Variable_1") before it has been initialized. In TensorFlow, all variables must be explicitly initialized, by running their "initializer" operations. For convenience, you can run all of the variable initializers in the current session by executing the following statement before your training loop:

tf.initialize_all_variables().run()

Note that this answer assumes that, as in the question, you are using tf.InteractiveSession, which allows you to run operations without specifying a session. For non-interactive uses, it is more common to use tf.Session, and initialize as follows:

init_op = tf.initialize_all_variables()

sess = tf.Session()
sess.run(init_op)

Answer 2

tf.initialize_all_variables() is deprecated. Instead initialize tensorflow variables with:

tf.global_variables_initializer()

A common example usage is:

with tf.Session() as sess:
     sess.run(tf.global_variables_initializer())