unslothai/unsloth · warning · HTTPException

Multiple cached {noun} differ only by case. Delete the exact

Error message

Multiple cached {noun} differ only by case. Delete the exact repo casing from On Device.

What it means

HTTPException 409 raised by resolve_destructive_repo_ids when the HF cache dir contains multiple repos whose ids differ from the requested one only by letter case (resolved by resolve_destructive_case_matches returning None). Deleting could hit the wrong casing on case-insensitive filesystems, so the API refuses the destructive operation and asks the user to delete the exact casing from the On Device UI.

Source

Thrown at studio/backend/hub/services/__init__.py:22

"""Shared helpers for the Hub service layer."""

from __future__ import annotations

from typing import Iterable

from fastapi import HTTPException

from hub.utils.hf_cache_state import resolve_destructive_case_matches


def resolve_destructive_repo_ids(repo_id: str, candidates: Iterable[str], *, noun: str) -> set[str]:
    """Cache-dir repo ids a destructive op on *repo_id* may target.

    Refuses with 409 on ambiguous case-only matches so a delete never removes
    the wrong casing. *noun* is the plural shown to the user."""
    resolved = resolve_destructive_case_matches(repo_id, candidates)
    if resolved is None:
        raise HTTPException(
            status_code = 409,
            detail = (
                f"Multiple cached {noun} differ only by case. "
                "Delete the exact repo casing from On Device."
            ),
        )
    return resolved

View on GitHub (pinned to 203007d190)

Solutions

1. Open the On Device page and delete the exact repo casing you want removed, one entry at a time.
2. Clean duplicates by deleting both case variants and re-downloading the correctly-cased repo.
3. Audit scripts that normalize repo ids to lowercase before download.

Example fix

# before
DELETE /hub/datasets/user/model   # cache holds both User/Model and user/model -> 409

# after
# On Device UI: delete 'User/Model' explicitly, then retry the API call for the remaining casing

import httpx

resp = httpx.delete(f"{api}/hub/datasets/{repo_id}")
if resp.status_code == 409 and "differ only by case" in resp.text:
    # direct the user to On Device to pick the exact casing
    show_message("Multiple cached casings exist; delete the exact one from On Device.")

When it happens

Trigger: Calling a delete endpoint for a repo while the cache holds e.g. both 'User/Model' and 'user/model' (or other case variants) matching case-insensitively; common after downloading the same repo under differently-cased ids at different times.

Common situations: macOS/Windows (case-insensitive FS) caches where both casings were snapshotted; scripts that lowercase repo ids before downloading; re-adding a repo with different capitalization.

Related errors

• Failed to read the local dataset cache.
• Invalid repo_id format
• Dataset not found in cache
• Failed to create models folder: {path}: {e}
• Models folder path is not a directory: {path}

AI-assisted analysis of unslothai/unsloth@203007d190 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e2c6f1f1983e60ab. Report an issue: GitHub.