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?

Airless

Just to clarify: did you create this virtualenv with sudo? – Scale

@sebastian_oe: I believe I did. I'll recreate one to be sure. – Airless

Then this might be the problem. Try creating a virtualenv without sudo. – Scale

@sebastian_oe: I created a virtual environment without sudo. Indeed, the package installs correctly now. Please, can you promote your comment to an answer so I can accept it? – Airless

Also if you are switching between different users, make sure you are using user that owns (or has write access) virtualenv directory, because you can activate virtualenv with other user, but it won't let you install any packages and will give permission access. – Electroacoustics

Another possible cause is creating the virtualenv from linux on an NTFS partition. Try recreating it on e.g. an ext3 or ext4 partition. – Subcontinent

one option, change permissions for the virtual environment to all users, see superuser.com/a/630093/1235905 – Rickart

Answer 1

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.

Scale

if I want to create it in /opt which requires sudo, I think virtualenv won't install without sudo. – Chavannes

How to create the virtualenv without sudo? – Trustful

If you did create the virtualenv with sudo, see answer by @vingtoft for how to fix it easily without recreating – Calida

Answer 2

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

Campy

This worked for me (chown /usr/local/lib/python3.4), except I don't think I had created a virtualenv as root, I had actually installed Python3.4 as root. I'm still testing, but do you think I will run into any more issues with this solution, or will this chown fix most errors? – Percolate

How do you find out if you've created virtualenv or python as root? – Azine

This fixed my problem. I was in a similar situation as the OP in that I needed to create a virtual environment in /opt/ directory which I couldn't do without sudo privileges. – Bendix

This works. Thanks. – Roberge

Answer 3

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

Counterfoil

this helped me with my permission denied errors when installing dependencies from requirements.txt (django) It seems that the venv has to be activated from root. – Decurion

Answer 4

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

Nonoccurrence

Answer 5

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)

Turboprop

Answer 6

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.

Metalwork

Answer 7

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

Beverle

Answer 8

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 )

Acidforming

posted here because it's a popular question that mentions the appropriate keywords, hence is more likely to be found and be useful to other people – Acidforming

Answer 9

I had the same problem. I created *and activated a venv as a regular user in Git Bash within VS Code running on Windows 11 and got a "permission denied" when trying to run pip. I could not use sudo at all (corporate laptop).

My solution was:

Create your venv like normal (non-root user):

python -m venv <venv_name>

Activate your venv:

source venv/Scripts/activate

Then, assuming you're using a requirements.txt file, run:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

The key is the "python -m"

You may need to upgrade your pip if a package fails to install properly. Try:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip

then try reinstalling your requirements.

---

If you want to confirm this is the same error to the solution above, you can recreate the error by:

*after you activate your venv, run:

python --version

or

which python

and they should both indicate you're using the python within your venv (again, assuming you activated it)

Then run:

pip --version

and you should see your permission denied.

$ pip --version

bash: \venv/Scripts/pip: Permission denied

Then running

python -m pip --version

should show you the correct pip version of the venv and path within your venv.

Moskow

Answer 10

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/

Notification

This was not the problem: if you read the comments, the OP had created the virtual env with sudo in the first place. – Vasodilator

Answer 11

On centos 7 this worked:

first, create it

virtualenv --python=/usr/local/bin/python3.8 fastapi

then to activate

source fastapi/bin/activate

Reannareap

Answer 12

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.

Shoebill