missing the QUALITY-column

fasterq-dump is reading something that is not a real run accession

why

This appears when the thing being dumped is not a valid run: a BioProject ID (PRJNA…), a filename, or leftover partial data cached under one of those names by an earlier failed attempt. If two different inputs give the identical error, it is almost certainly stale cache being reused rather than a real resolution.

what to do

Clear what got cached under those names (look in ~/ncbi/public/sra/, or wherever vdb-config points), then loop over real run accessions one at a time — prefetch and fasterq-dump take one accession per call, not a text file of them.

traced · SRA toolkit case, Sep 2026
This is one entry from BioErrors, a catalogue of bioinformatics error messages that point at the wrong thing. Every entry was traced to its real cause before it was written down.
If your error is not in it, paste it there and it gets traced and added.