Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/cutadapt", line 600, in <module>
sys.exit(main())
File "/usr/bin/cutadapt", line 570, in main
desc, seq, qualities, trimmed = cutter.cut(desc, seq, qualities)
File "/usr/bin/cutadapt", line 386, in cut
assert not qualities or len(seq) == len(qualities)
AssertionError
From the error message, it looks like for at least one read the sequence length is not the same as the quality string length.
Perhaps your version of the fastq file got truncated somehow? A tail on the fastq file might reveal a truncation problem.
Running cutadapt v1.0 on a fresh copy of SRR029966.fastq from the SRA works fine for me, so you could always just re-download (and/or update your cutadapt version) and try again.
Debugging strategy #1: find the offending sequence. Show it to us.