Starting August 11, 2020, I am encountering a disk input/output error on ppc64le when installing a Python package inside a manylinux Docker container. The failed job is at https://travis-ci.com/github/intersystems/iknow/jobs/371005394.
The error message that shows up is
ERROR: Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [Errno 5] Input/output error: 'extern'
I read discussions of this error message at https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/7032, https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/issues/510, and https://askubuntu.com/questions/65830/errno-5-input-output-error-when-trying-to-install. They indicate that this error is a result of a problem with the file system, possibly a bad sector on the disk.
The error does not occur when I run my build script manually on my local ppc64le machine, and this error did not occur in the previous Travis CI builds on July 27 and earlier. Could this be related to the recent change in the ppc64le servers that Travis CI is using?