[firewalled env] OFFLINE mode
Author: stas00
State: closed

This issue comes from a need to be able to run `datasets` in a firewalled env, which currently makes the software hang until it times out, as it's unable to complete the network calls.

I propose the following approach to solving this problem, using the example of `run_seq2seq.py` as a sample program. There are 2 possible ways to going about it.

## 1. Manual

manually prepare data and metrics files, that is transfer to the firewalled instance the dataset and the metrics and run:

```
DATASETS_OFFLINE=1 run_seq2seq.py  --train_file xyz.csv --validation_file xyz.csv ...
```

`datasets` must not make any network calls and if there is a logic to do that and something is missing it should assert that this or that action requires network and therefore it can't proceed.

## 2. Automatic

In some clouds one can prepare a datastorage ahead of time with a normal networked environment but which doesn't have gpus and then one switches to the gpu instance which is firewalled, but it can access all the cached data. This is the ideal situation, since in this scenario we don't have to do anything manually, but simply run the same application twice:

1. on the non-firewalled instance:
```
run_seq2seq.py  --dataset_name wmt16 --dataset_config ro-en ...
```

which should download and cached everything.

2. and then immediately after on the firewalled instance, which shares the same filesystem
```
DATASETS_OFFLINE=1 run_seq2seq.py  --dataset_name wmt16 --dataset_config ro-en ...
```

and the metrics and datasets should be cached by the invocation number 1 and any network calls be skipped and if the logic is missing data it should assert and not try to fetch any data from online.

## Common Issues

1. for example currently `datasets` tries to look up online datasets if the files contain json or csv, despite the paths already provided

```
     if dataset and path in _PACKAGED_DATASETS_MODULES:
```

2. it has an issue with metrics. e.g. I had to manually copy `rouge/rouge.py` from the `datasets` repo to the current dir - or it was hanging.

I had to comment out `head_hf_s3(...)` calls to make things work. So all those `try: head_hf_s3(...)` shouldn't be tried with `DATASETS_OFFLINE=1`

Here is the corresponding issue for `transformers`: https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/issues/10379

Thanks.

Comments: Thanks for reporting and for all the details and suggestions.

I'm totally in favor of having a HF_DATASETS_OFFLINE env variable to disable manually all the connection checks, remove retries etc.

Moreover you may know that the use case that you are mentioning is already supported from `datasets` 1.3.0, i.e. you already can:
- first load datasets and metrics from an instance with internet connection
- then be able to reload datasets and metrics from another instance without connection (as long as the filesystem is shared)

This is already implemented, but currently it only works if the requests return a `ConnectionError` (or any error actually). Not sure why it would hang instead of returning an error.

Maybe this is just a issue with the timeout value being not set or too high ?
Is there a way I can have access to one of the instances on which there's this issue (we can discuss this offline) ?


I'm on master, so using all the available bells and whistles already.

If you look at the common issues - it for example tries to look up files if they appear in `_PACKAGED_DATASETS_MODULES` which it shouldn't do.

--------------

Yes, there is a nuance to it. As I mentioned it's firewalled - that is it has a network but making any calls outside - it just hangs in:

```
sin_addr=inet_addr("xx.xx.xx.xx")}, [28->16]) = 0
close(5)                                = 0
socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM|SOCK_CLOEXEC, IPPROTO_TCP) = 5
connect(5, {sa_family=AF_INET, sin_port=htons(3128), sin_addr=inet_addr("yy.yy.yy.yy")}, 16^C) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted if SA_RESTART is set)
```
until it times out.

That's why we need to be able to tell the software that there is no network to rely on even if there is one (good for testing too).

So what I'm thinking is that this is a simple matter of pre-ambling any network call wrappers with:

```
if HF_DATASETS_OFFLINE:
    assert "Attempting to make a network call under Offline mode"
```

and then fixing up if there is anything else to fix to make it work.

--------------

Otherwise I think the only other problem I encountered is that we need to find a way to pre-cache metrics, for some reason it's not caching it and wanting to fetch it from online.

Which is extra strange since it already has those files in the `datasets` repo itself that is on the filesystem.

The workaround I had to do is to copy `rouge/rouge.py` (with the parent folder) from the datasets repo to the current dir - and then it proceeded.

Ok understand better the hanging issue.
I guess catching connection errors is not enough, we should also avoid all the hangings.
Currently the offline mode tests are only done by simulating an instant connection fail that returns an error, let's have another connection mock that hangs instead.

I'll also take a look at why you had to do this for `rouge`.


FWIW, I think instant failure on the behalf of a network call is the simplest solution to correctly represent the environment and having the caller to sort it out is the next thing to do, since here it is the case of having no functional network, it's just that the software doesn't know this is the case, because there is some network. So we just need to help it to bail out instantly rather than hang waiting for it to time out. And afterwards everything else you said.

Update on this: 

I managed to create a mock environment for tests that makes the connections hang until timeout.
I managed to reproduce the issue you're having in this environment.

I'll update the offline test cases to also test the robustness to connection hangings, and make sure we set proper timeouts where it's needed in the code. This should cover the _automatic_ section you mentioned.

Fabulous! I'm glad you were able to reproduce the issues, @lhoestq!

I lost access to the firewalled setup, but I emulated it with:

```
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw default deny outgoing
```
(thanks @mfuntowicz)

I was able to test `HF_DATASETS_OFFLINE=1` and it worked great - i.e. didn't try to reach out with it and used the cached files instead.

Thank you!