Qiskit-terra: credentials failed for qiskit ver 0.6.1

[balewski]

Informations

• Qiskit Terra version: 0.6.1
• Python version: 3.7.0
• Operating system:MAC OSX 10.13.6

What is the current behavior?

After I acquired fresh token from https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qx/account/advanced
IBMQ.load_accounts() fails.

Steps to reproduce the problem

from qiskit import IBMQ
myToken='b6abe11442c9a...'
IBMQ.save_account(myToken)
IBMQ.load_accounts()

Results with

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/qiskit/backends/ibmq/ibmqsingleprovider.py", line 71, in _authenticate
    credentials.verify)
  File "/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IBMQuantumExperience/IBMQuantumExperience.py", line 478, in __init__
    self.req = _Request(token, config=config, verify=verify)
  File "/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IBMQuantumExperience/IBMQuantumExperience.py", line 253, in __init__
    ntlm_credentials=self.ntlm_credentials)
  File "/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IBMQuantumExperience/IBMQuantumExperience.py", line 95, in __init__
    self.obtain_token(config=self.config)
  File "/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/IBMQuantumExperience/IBMQuantumExperience.py", line 159, in obtain_token
    raise CredentialsError('error during login: %s' % error_message)
IBMQuantumExperience.IBMQuantumExperience.CredentialsError: error during login: Wrong user or password, check your credentials.

What is the expected behavior?

Would be better if IBMQ.load_accounts() accepted me. All worked well w/ ver 0.5.

Suggested solutions

[jaygambetta]

Can you try enable_account or regenerating the token. Your code should work. If you type IBMQ.stored_accounts() do you see the account.

[jaygambetta]

@pacomf I can confirm this has happened to me today as well.

[pacomf]

I cant reproduce the bug, i regenerate my APIToken and it works fine using qiskit terra... is it still happening? Can you send me more details?

[jaygambetta]

It happened for about 5 hours on the weekend. However, @nonhermitian could run at the same time and then it started working again.

[pacomf]

Mmmm, maybe an issue with the API... we will investigate it

[nonhermitian]

I will add that, when it happened to me, I could log into some accounts and not others.

[balewski]

Hi @jaygambetta,
your tip helped. IBMQ.stored_accounts() has returned some old token, not the new one.
Looks like IBMQ.save_account(myToken) is unable to replace token if it exist - I leave it to you to decide if it is a bug or a feature.
My hack around it is to execute first: IBMQ.delete_accounts()
to clear my old token. So this sequence always works:
IBMQ.delete_accounts() myToken='b6abe11442c9a...' IBMQ.save_account(myToken) IBMQ.load_accounts()
I can move on, closing thus ticket.
Thanks for help
Jan

[ajavadia]

Let's leave this open and investigate whether there's a bug with IBMQ.save_account() re-writing old tokens.
@diego-plan9 can you please have a look?

[diego-plan9]

Yes - thanks @balewski for the information, which is spot on - currently, IBMQ.save_account() will just print a warning and do nothing else if old credentials are present:

https://github.com/Qiskit/qiskit-terra/blob/master/qiskit/backends/ibmq/ibmqprovider.py#L140-L143

Looks like IBMQ.save_account(myToken) is unable to replace token if it exist - I leave it to you to decide if it is a bug or a feature.

Actually ... I can't decide if it is a bug or a feature either! :thinking: In the original draft implementation, the .save_account() (.add_account() by that time) method was raising an Exception in the case of trying to store a duplicate account. This was later changed to a warning, I'm unsure if by design and as a hard requisite from Jupyter-users needs, or also related to the slight tuning of the method functionality (ie. not authenticating during the call, just storing in disk). So I'm actually de-assigning myself, as probably the rest of the team has a more fresh view of the design decisions related to #1000.

I think we have several options:

• consider that not overwriting and raising a warning is indeed the desired behavior: the main drawback is that the warning might be easy to miss (and was probably the source of confusion in this issue).
• tune the method a bit in order to accept an overwrite=True optional parameter or a similar approach: the credentials module already has the needed parts in place, the main drawback would be that we touch a bit the public API.
• be a bit more restrictive and promote the warning back to an exception: it might affect users running the method twice and already used to not raising a warning (ie. maybe notebook users).

One way or the other, I think we need to make sure that the flow for updating an existing stored token is a bit smoother than the delete-save workaround proposed by @balewski, as it seems a relatively common use case.

[balewski]

From external user perspective:

It happens rather often that the ibmq_16_melbourne or even sometimes ibmqx4 does not accept the job, throws some 'general error', despite your web-page says both hardwares are operational.
Then, it is natural to (wrongly?) guess perhaps my token is invalid.
Then, I'd ask for a new token and try to use it - hoping it will help.
For such train of though the natural solution is assume 'user knows what he wants'. If user wants to replace the token by calling save_account(), just replace it. You can issue a warning that there was an old token (still valid), but why not just replace token each time user calls IBMQ.save_account(myToken) ?
Would this have any negative effect on your end?
Thanks
Jan

[ajavadia]

I think save_account should not raise an exception. Overwriting is not bad behavior. Similar to overwriting a key in a dict or something. Should just work.

[jaygambetta]

@ajavadia is there an update.

[balewski]

Hi,
there is some inconsistency between the devices status you show here:
https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/qx/account/advanced
and actual avaliability.
At this moment, both ibmqx4 and ibmq_16_melbourne are reported to work.

However,. when I try to submit my circuit using Qiskit ver: 0.6.1 I get the error below for either.

Got a 400 code response to https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/api/Jobs?access_token=VCgYWnMUUBaYeT5gSmGO14cX93Foo4rccsLUVvIjf3bwYEZNjxlDcRmPArS2wZ25: {"error":{"status":400,"message":"Generic error","code":"GENERIC_ERROR"}}

Note, my token is correct, because I can submit the circuit to your simulator
'backend': 'ibmq_qasm_simulator',
'jobId2': '1814808',
'startTime': '2018-11-09 17:53:28'}

Can you have a look ?
Thanks
Jan

[ajavadia]

@balewski the "GENERIC ERROR" you see is intermittent behavior on the cloud API, I think. You don't see it consistently right? It should be unrelated to the original issue.

The original issue about overwriting old credentials is addressed in PR #1295.

[yriyat]

I read up on #1295. Am I supposed to add 'overwrite=true' as code somewhere? I was not clear on how to add that parameter. Thank you.

[balewski]

yes, do this once (comment out for the 2nd and later executions of the same script):
IBMQ.save_account(myToken,overwrite=True)
where myToken is this long authorization string
Jan

On Jan 31, 2020, at 3:12 PM, yriyat [e-mail] wrote:

Am I supposed to add 'overwrite=true' as code somewhere?