TabFlex and MotherNet checkpoints unavailable - Azure host returns NXDOMAIN

[zadid6pretam]

I am trying to run pretrained TabFlex and MotherNet models using the current TICL repository. The package installs correctly and both model classes import successfully, but their checkpoints cannot be downloaded because the configured Azure Blob Storage hostname no longer resolves.

The affected hostname is:

amuellermothernet.blob.core.windows.net

Both my notebook server and a separate web browser return a DNS NXDOMAIN error.

Steps to reproduce
from ticl.prediction.tabflex import TabFlex

model = TabFlex()

This produces:

urllib.error.URLError:
<urlopen error [Errno -2] Name or service not known>

The DNS failure can also be reproduced directly:

getent hosts amuellermothernet.blob.core.windows.net

curl -I --connect-timeout 15
https://amuellermothernet.blob.core.windows.net/

Result:

curl: (6) Could not resolve host:
amuellermothernet.blob.core.windows.net

Environment
OS: Linux
Python: 3.10
PyTorch: 2.0.0
CUDA build: 11.8
CUDA available: True
GPU: NVIDIA RTX A6000
TICL installation: editable installation from the current GitHub repository

The following imports work correctly:

from ticl.prediction.tabflex import TabFlex
from ticl.prediction import MotherNetClassifier, EnsembleMeta

Required checkpoints

TabFlex appears to require these checkpoints:

• ssm_tabpfn_b4_maxnumclasses100_modellinear_attention_numfeatures1000_n1024_validdatanew_warm_08_23_2024_19_25_40_epoch_3140.cpkt

• ssm_tabpfn_b4_largedatasetTrue_modellinear_attention_nsamples50000_08_01_2024_22_05_50_epoch_110.cpkt

• ssm_tabpfn_modellinear_attention_08_28_2024_19_00_44_epoch_3110.cpkt

The default MotherNet classifier appears to require:

• mn_Dclass_average_03_25_2024_17_14_32_epoch_3970.cpkt

The microsoft/mothernet Hugging Face repository currently contains only tabpfn_07_24_2023_epoch1650.cpkt, which appears to be an older TabPFN reference checkpoint rather than the MotherNet checkpoint required by MotherNetClassifier.

The TabFlex Hugging Face paper page also does not provide model files.

Request

Could the maintainers please:

• Restore the Azure checkpoint host, or
• Upload the required TabFlex and MotherNet checkpoints to Hugging Face or another persistent public location, and
• Update fetch_model() to use the new checkpoint URLs?

It would also be helpful to publish checksums for the checkpoint files so downloaded or mirrored copies can be verified.

This currently prevents reproduction of both the MotherNet and TabFlex inference examples, even when TICL and its CUDA dependencies are installed successfully.