Docker Container "Time Limit Exceeded" Error in Validation

I successfully built and uploaded my Docker container, and the status has changed to "Import completed" and "Active."

However, when I attempt to test the algorithm via the "try-out algorithm", the process fails with a "time limit exceeded" error. - When running the Doker container locally on my computer, the inference completes in under 10 seconds. - However, in the challenge validation environment, it takes more than 13 minutes, leading to the error.

Could you please assist me in identifying the cause of this issue and guide how to resolve it?

Hi kbnam,

It looks like the time-out error is because your container was trying to use the internet to download some dicom, which is not possible in the grand-challenge cloud environment. The test_run.sh in the submission example template mentioned it: https://github.com/CoWBenchmark/TopCoW_Algo_Submission/blob/62eea2b9a295fe5ed39e429b4e2f4a48f51674ce/task-1-seg/test_run.sh#L42

## Note the extra arguments that are passed here:
# '--network none'
#    entails there is no internet connection
docker run --rm \
    --platform=linux/amd64 \
    --network none \

For example, this is the previous failed submission (challenge admins do not have access to your own private try-out algorithms logs, thus I am inferring from your previous submission, which also had a 13 minutes timeout error):

Result ID
    28d0dd7e-87fb-4572-a067-e02946be3670
Algorithm
    ct_1 
Algorithm Version
    23f91a46-a7df-4764-bfa6-d54f2661590c
Error Message
    Time limit exceeded
Duration
    13 minutes

The error in the log was:

2024-09-18T08:08:37.509000+00:00 /home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pydicom/data/data_manager.py:375: UserWarning: A download failure occurred while attempting to retrieve US1_J2KR.dcm
2024-09-18T08:08:37.509000+00:00   warn_and_log(
2024-09-18T08:10:48.538000+00:00 /home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pydicom/data/data_manager.py:375: UserWarning: A download failure occurred while attempting to retrieve MR-SIEMENS-DICOM-WithOverlays.dcm
2024-09-18T08:10:48.538000+00:00   warn_and_log(
2024-09-18T08:12:59.566000+00:00 /home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pydicom/data/data_manager.py:375: UserWarning: A download failure occurred while attempting to retrieve OBXXXX1A.dcm
2024-09-18T08:12:59.566000+00:00   warn_and_log(
2024-09-18T08:15:10.595000+00:00 /home/user/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pydicom/data/data_manager.py:375: UserWarning: A download failure occurred while attempting to retrieve US1_UNCR.dcm
2024-09-18T08:15:10.595000+00:00   warn_and_log(

Please try your docker locally with test_run.sh if possible, and please take note of the no internet setting.

Best, Kaiyuan

Those specific errors are coming from pydicom that released version 3 with this bug a couple of weeks ago. A fix has been implemented but as of now is unreleased. It is best to pin pydicom<3 in your dependencies for the time being.

Hi James,

Thank you very much for the helpful suggestion!

Best, Kaiyuan