How to avoid "Permission denied" when using pip with virtualenv
Question:
I attempt to deploy a Python package with pip in a virtual environment on an Ubuntu machine, but encounter a permission-related issue. For example:
(TestVirtualEnv)test@testServer:~$ pip install markdown2
terminates by:
error: could not create ‘/home/test/virtualenvs/TestVirtualEnv/lib/python3.3/site-packages/markdown2.py’: Permission denied
I can’t sudo, since it will install the package globally, and not within the virtual environment. I chowned site-packages; ls shows only directories related to easy_install, pip and setuptools, and nothing related to Markdown.
How to deploy a package in a virtual environment with pip without encountering permission-related errors?
Answers:
virtualenv permission problems might occur when you create the virtualenv as sudo and then operate without sudo in the virtualenv.
As found out in your question’s comment, the solution here is to create the virtualenv without sudo to be able to work (esp. write) in it without sudo.
I didn’t create my virtualenv using sudo. So Sebastian’s answer didn’t apply to me. My project is called utils. I checked utils directory and saw this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 macuser staff 983 6 Jan 15:17 README.md
drwxr-xr-x 6 root staff 204 6 Jan 14:36 utils.egg-info
-rw-r--r-- 1 macuser staff 31 6 Jan 15:09 requirements.txt
As you can see, utils.egg-info is owned by root not macuser. That is why it was giving me permission denied error. I also had to remove /Users/macuser/.virtualenvs/armoury/lib/python2.7/site-packages/utils.egg-link as it was created by root as well. I did pip install -e . again after removing those, and it worked.
Solution:
If you created the virtualenv as root, run the following command:
sudo chown -R your_username:your_username path/to/virtuaelenv/
This will probably fix your problem.
Cheers
In my case, I was using mkvirtualenv, but didn’t tell it I was going to be using python3. I got this error:
mkvirtualenv hug
pip3 install hug -U
....
error: could not create '/usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages': Permission denied
It worked after specifying python3:
mkvirtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 hug
pip3 install hug -U
You did not activate the virtual environment before using pip.
Try it with:
$(your venv path) . bin/activate
And then use pip -r requirements.txt on your main folder
While creating virtualenv if you use sudo the directory is created with root privileges.So when you try to install a package with non-sudo user you won’t have permission to install into it.
So always create virtualenv without sudo and install without sudo.
You can also copy packages installed on global python to virtualenv.
cp -r /lib/python/site-packages/* virtualenv/lib/python/site-packages/
If you created virtual environment using root then use this command
sudo su
it will give you the root access and then activate your virtual environment using this
source /root/.env/ENV_NAME/bin/activate
I’ve also had this happen (by accident) after creating a new venv while inside an existing virtual environment. an easy way to diagnose this would be to see where the python is symlinked to, i.e. run:
ls -l venv/bin/python
and make sure it points to the appropriate Python binary. For most systems this will be /usr/bin/python or /usr/bin/python3. while if it points to an existing virtual environment it’ll be something like /home/youruser/somedir/bin/python. if it’s the latter than I’d suggest recreating the venv while making sure that you aren’t “inside” any existing virtualenv (i.e. run deactivate )
I was getting permission denied when trying to activate my virtual environment. I landed on this page trying to find solutions so perhaps this could also help others who are facing similar issues
source your_env_name_goes_here/bin/activate
I was using the wrong command (without the source), to activate my environment. If you’re on zsh that’s the correct command to use. If not, python docs has a table of the commands to use depending on your platform and shell (windows or mac, bash or powershell etc)
On centos 7 this worked:
first, create it
virtualenv --python=/usr/local/bin/python3.8 fastapi
then to activate
source fastapi/bin/activate
I have had this issue also. I’ve checked my file & directory ownership and permissions using ls -hal. I own the files and they have the right permissions. For me, the issue is running the pip command, but it’s the wrong pip. Try running which pip to find out which version of pip is being used. From the activated virtual environment, run python3 -m pip install packagename instead of pip install packagename. If it gets worse, you can run /path/to/the/pip/you/want/pip install filename.
I attempt to deploy a Python package with pip in a virtual environment on an Ubuntu machine, but encounter a permission-related issue. For example:
(TestVirtualEnv)test@testServer:~$ pip install markdown2
terminates by:
error: could not create ‘/home/test/virtualenvs/TestVirtualEnv/lib/python3.3/site-packages/markdown2.py’: Permission denied
I can’t sudo, since it will install the package globally, and not within the virtual environment. I chowned site-packages; ls shows only directories related to easy_install, pip and setuptools, and nothing related to Markdown.
How to deploy a package in a virtual environment with pip without encountering permission-related errors?
virtualenv permission problems might occur when you create the virtualenv as sudo and then operate without sudo in the virtualenv.
As found out in your question’s comment, the solution here is to create the virtualenv without sudo to be able to work (esp. write) in it without sudo.
I didn’t create my virtualenv using sudo. So Sebastian’s answer didn’t apply to me. My project is called utils. I checked utils directory and saw this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 macuser staff 983 6 Jan 15:17 README.md
drwxr-xr-x 6 root staff 204 6 Jan 14:36 utils.egg-info
-rw-r--r-- 1 macuser staff 31 6 Jan 15:09 requirements.txt
As you can see, utils.egg-info is owned by root not macuser. That is why it was giving me permission denied error. I also had to remove /Users/macuser/.virtualenvs/armoury/lib/python2.7/site-packages/utils.egg-link as it was created by root as well. I did pip install -e . again after removing those, and it worked.
Solution:
If you created the virtualenv as root, run the following command:
sudo chown -R your_username:your_username path/to/virtuaelenv/
This will probably fix your problem.
Cheers
In my case, I was using mkvirtualenv, but didn’t tell it I was going to be using python3. I got this error:
mkvirtualenv hug
pip3 install hug -U
....
error: could not create '/usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages': Permission denied
It worked after specifying python3:
mkvirtualenv --python=/usr/bin/python3 hug
pip3 install hug -U
You did not activate the virtual environment before using pip.
Try it with:
$(your venv path) . bin/activate
And then use pip -r requirements.txt on your main folder
While creating virtualenv if you use sudo the directory is created with root privileges.So when you try to install a package with non-sudo user you won’t have permission to install into it.
So always create virtualenv without sudo and install without sudo.
You can also copy packages installed on global python to virtualenv.
cp -r /lib/python/site-packages/* virtualenv/lib/python/site-packages/
If you created virtual environment using root then use this command
sudo su
it will give you the root access and then activate your virtual environment using this
source /root/.env/ENV_NAME/bin/activate
I’ve also had this happen (by accident) after creating a new venv while inside an existing virtual environment. an easy way to diagnose this would be to see where the python is symlinked to, i.e. run:
ls -l venv/bin/python
and make sure it points to the appropriate Python binary. For most systems this will be /usr/bin/python or /usr/bin/python3. while if it points to an existing virtual environment it’ll be something like /home/youruser/somedir/bin/python. if it’s the latter than I’d suggest recreating the venv while making sure that you aren’t “inside” any existing virtualenv (i.e. run deactivate )
I was getting permission denied when trying to activate my virtual environment. I landed on this page trying to find solutions so perhaps this could also help others who are facing similar issues
source your_env_name_goes_here/bin/activate
I was using the wrong command (without the source), to activate my environment. If you’re on zsh that’s the correct command to use. If not, python docs has a table of the commands to use depending on your platform and shell (windows or mac, bash or powershell etc)
On centos 7 this worked:
first, create it
virtualenv --python=/usr/local/bin/python3.8 fastapi
then to activate
source fastapi/bin/activate
I have had this issue also. I’ve checked my file & directory ownership and permissions using ls -hal. I own the files and they have the right permissions. For me, the issue is running the pip command, but it’s the wrong pip. Try running which pip to find out which version of pip is being used. From the activated virtual environment, run python3 -m pip install packagename instead of pip install packagename. If it gets worse, you can run /path/to/the/pip/you/want/pip install filename.