Rstan failed to create sampler without error message

Interfaces RStan
1

I had a model that was working, but then I added a generated quantities block and new data so I could get predictions. When I did this I got the error

failed to create the sampler; sampling not done

There was no other information provided, making this problem difficult to debug.

  • Operating System - Linux

  • RStan Version - 2.17.3

  • Output of writeLines(readLines(file.path(Sys.getenv("HOME"), ".R/Makevars")))

    CXXFLAGS=-O3 -mtune=native -march=native -Wno-unused-variable -Wno-unused-function -Wno-macro-redefined

    CXXFLAGS += -Wno-ignored-attributes -Wno-deprecated-declarations

  • Output of devtools::session_info("rstan")

    setting value
    version R version 3.5.1 (2018-07-02)
    system x86_64, linux-gnu
    ui RStudio (1.1.447)
    language (EN)
    collate en_US.UTF-8
    tz America/New_York
    date 2018-07-08

    package * version date
    assertthat 0.2.0 2017-04-11
    BH 1.66.0-1 2018-02-13
    cli 1.0.0 2017-11-05
    colorspace 1.3-2 2016-12-14
    crayon 1.3.4 2017-09-16
    dichromat 2.0-0 2013-01-24
    digest 0.6.15 2018-01-28
    ggplot2 * 2.2.1.9000 2018-06-30
    glue 1.2.0 2017-10-29
    graphics * 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    grDevices * 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    grid 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    gridExtra 2.3 2017-09-09
    gtable 0.2.0 2016-02-26
    inline 0.3.14 2015-04-13
    labeling 0.3 2014-08-23
    lattice 0.20-35 2017-03-25
    lazyeval 0.2.1 2017-10-29
    magrittr 1.5 2014-11-22
    MASS 7.3-50 2018-04-30
    Matrix 1.2-14 2018-04-13
    methods * 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    mgcv 1.8-24 2018-06-23
    munsell 0.4.3 2016-02-13
    nlme 3.1-137 2018-04-07
    pillar 1.2.3 2018-05-25
    plyr 1.8.4 2016-06-08
    R6 2.2.2 2017-06-17
    RColorBrewer 1.1-2 2014-12-07
    Rcpp 0.12.17 2018-05-18
    RcppEigen 0.3.3.4.0 2018-02-07
    reshape2 1.4.3 2017-12-11
    rlang 0.2.1 2018-05-30
    rstan * 2.17.3 2018-01-20
    scales 0.5.0 2017-08-24
    StanHeaders * 2.17.2 2018-01-20
    stats * 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    stats4 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    stringi 1.2.3 2018-06-12
    stringr * 1.3.1 2018-05-10
    tibble * 1.4.2 2018-01-22
    tools 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    utf8 1.1.4 2018-05-24
    utils * 3.5.1 2018-07-02
    viridisLite 0.3.0 2018-02-01
    withr 2.1.2 2018-03-15
    source
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
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    Github (tidyverse/ggplot2@348b26f)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    local
    local
    local
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
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    CRAN (R 3.5.1)
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    cran (@1.2.3)
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    cran (@0.2.1)
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    local
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    cran (@1.2.3)
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    cran (@1.1.4)
    local
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)
    CRAN (R 3.5.0)

2

I was able to debug this. In my case it turned out to be a dimension mismatch problem

1 Like
3

Out of curiosity, was there any difference in error messages if chains = 1 or chains = 4?

4

No, the chain number did not make a difference.

1 Like
5

Ugg, thanks for checking. @bgoodri don’t dimension mismatches usually throw useful errors? Is this a known issue?