Installation fails on Linux with modern pip/setuptools — 4 bugs with fixes

Describe the bug

./start.sh fails on Linux with modern pip/setuptools before the webui ever starts. There are 4 distinct bugs in the installer and requirements-voice-gpu.txt that affect any clean Ubuntu 24.04 install.

Bug 1 — ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources' setuptools >= 71 removed pkg_resources. The installer does not pin setuptools, so fresh conda envs and pip's isolated build envs in /tmp both get a modern version that breaks openai-whisper's build.

Bug 2 — nvidia-cudnn-cu12 version conflict requirements-voice-gpu.txt pins nvidia-cudnn-cu12==8.9.7.29, but torch==2.5.1+cu124 requires ==9.1.0.70. pip cannot resolve this and aborts.

Bug 3 — cmake not listed as system prerequisite pyopenjtalk requires cmake to compile. It is not mentioned in the README or install docs, causing a hard FileNotFoundError.

Bug 4 — conda env created with wrong permissions After the first failed run, installer_files/env has permissions that block pip from reinstalling packages, even as the same user. Requires manual sudo chown to recover.

To Reproduce

1. Clone the repo on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (clean install, NVIDIA GPU)
2. Run ./start.sh
3. Select G (NVIDIA GPU)
4. Observe failure during pip install -r requirements-voice-gpu.txt:
   • First run: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'
   • After attempting to fix setuptools manually: nvidia-cudnn-cu12 version conflict
   • After fixing cudnn: FileNotFoundError: cmake not found (pyopenjtalk)
   • After first failed run: Permission denied on reinstall attempts

Expected behavior

./start.sh should complete installation and launch the webui without requiring manual intervention.

Screenshots

N/A — all errors are terminal output (reproduced exactly as shown above).

Additional context

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Python: 3.10.20 (conda managed by installer)
• GPU: NVIDIA (cu124)
• pip: 25.0 / 26.x
• voice-pro: latest (ABUS Launcher v3.0)

Workaround that works:

source installer_files/conda/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
conda activate installer_files/env

# Fix permissions (Bug 4)
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER installer_files/env

# Fix pkg_resources (Bug 1)
pip install "setuptools==69.5.1" --force-reinstall --no-user
pip install openai-whisper==20240930 --no-build-isolation --no-user

# Fix cmake (Bug 3)
sudo apt-get install -y cmake build-essential

# Fix cudnn conflict (Bug 2)
grep -v "nvidia-cudnn-cu12" requirements-voice-gpu.txt > /tmp/requirements-fixed.txt
pip install -r /tmp/requirements-fixed.txt --no-build-isolation --no-user

conda deactivate
./start.sh  # succeeds

Suggested fixes:

• Pin setuptools<71 in the installer bootstrap, or install openai-whisper with --no-build-isolation
• Remove nvidia-cudnn-cu12==8.9.7.29 from requirements-voice-gpu.txt (torch pulls the correct version)
• Add cmake and build-essential to Linux prerequisites in the README
• Add chmod -R u+w installer_files/env after env creation in start.sh