conda can't update itself

Question

I'm on linux machine with rhel7 and when I tried to install some packages, I got the following message.

Solving environment: failed

CondaValueError: Malformed version string '~': invalid character(s).

Google search suggested to update conda (my conda version is 4.5.11). So I tried to update conda, but canda failed to update although no errors, as shown below.

$ conda update -n base conda
Solving environment: done


==> WARNING: A newer version of conda exists. <==
current version: 4.5.11
latest version: 4.8.3

Please update conda by running

$ conda update -n base conda

# All requested packages already installed.

$ conda --version
conda 4.5.11

Repeating the command got the same result.

Answer 1

Your version of python-3.5 is not supported anymore by the official channels and thus conda could not find a suitable package to update.

You can explicitly request an update by running:

conda install -n base conda=4.8.3 python=3.8