Troubleshooting

Images and installation

Symptom	Check
OpenVLA remote code breaks in model load	Use Transformers 4.40.1; newer releases are not compatible with the pinned checkpoint code.
Torch reports _ARRAY_API not found	OpenVLA's Torch 2.2 build requires NumPy 1.x.
VLA-JEPA import fails	Use the pinned LeRobot commit in physical_ai_evals/modal.py; it requires Python 3.12 and a Transformers 5.x stack.
OpenVLA and VLA-JEPA dependencies conflict	They cannot share an environment. Use the two Modal images or two isolated GPU environments.
daft-cuTile Modal import rejects the checkout	Set DAFT_CUTILE_SOURCE_ROOT to a clean checkout at the exact revision named in physical_ai_evals/cutile_vla_jepa.py.
daft-cuTile cohort exceeds four environments	Use CUTILE_ENV_BATCH_SIZE=1 through 4; the production engine has static B1 and B4 graphs.
EGL context creation fails	On Linux set MUJOCO_GL=egl and PYOPENGL_PLATFORM=egl; use cgl on macOS.
evdev cannot find linux/input.h	Install linux-libc-dev.
Extension build cannot find a compiler	Install build-essential, clang, and cmake.
LIBERO-Pro BDDL cannot resolve an object	Confirm the pinned Pro fork, rather than standard LIBERO, is the imported libero package.

Rollouts

Symptom	Check
OpenVLA gripper never opens	Verify the checkpoint-specific RLDS-to-LIBERO gripper conversion and suite unnorm_key.
Success changes after preprocessing edits	Compare camera rotation, OpenVLA center crop, resize, and input range.
torch.from_numpy rejects negative strides	Preserve the adapter's contiguous copy after camera rotation.
Later episodes hit the horizon unexpectedly	env.reset() must precede every set_init_state().
A resume skips damaged data	It should not: remove no files manually; the completion validator rejects corrupt/gapped partitions and overwrites them.
A custom policy works locally but not on Modal	Include its defining module in the image and call evaluate() from a custom Modal function.

Run a real CPU simulator smoke before spending GPU time:

make smoke-openvla BENCHMARK=libero SUITE=libero_spatial
make smoke-vla-jepa BENCHMARK=libero_para SUITE=libero_goal
make smoke-openvla BENCHMARK=libero_pro SUITE=libero_spatial PERTURBATIONS=lan