So the purpose of this check is to verify if the necessary sharded files are present in the model repo before attempting a download, presumably to avoid a large download if all files aren't present. If we cannot connect to the hub, we just have to assume the necessary shard files are already present locally.

I think we can just skip this check if local_files_only=True and then check if all the shard filenames are present in the cached_folder

How about now?

I think just this is sufficient

if not local_files_only:
    # run model_info check

Run snapshot download

Then after the cached_filenames is created, iterate over the files to verify they exist

for filename in cached_filename:
      if not if not os.path.exists(filename):
           raise EnvironmentError("expected file not present in {cached_folder}")

1. We don't have to run snapshot_download() when local_files_only=False, that might be unnecessary.
2. Why run snapshot_download() after also running model_info()?
3. Even if we run snapshot_download() regardless of local_files_only var, I think we should have it inside try-except in case the endpoint cannot be pinged for some reason and raise the ConnectionError as before.

See if b7af511 resolves this.

Ah I see what you mean. Let me update. Sorry about the back and forth.

We don't need a new function to walk over the cached folder. If you just iterate over cached_filenames and check if the file exits. Avoid looping over files multiple times this way.

for cached_file in cached_filenames:
      if not os.path.exists(cached_file):
                raise EnvironmentError(f"{cached_file} not found in {cached_folder which is required..."