[python] sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file

I get this error when setting up a server in Django. It is sqlite3 which means it should create the .db file but it doesn't seem to be doing so. I've stipulated SQLite as the backend and an absolute file path for where to put it, but no luck.

Is this a bug or am I doing something incorrect? (Was just thinking, is the absolute file path specified differently in Ubuntu?)

Here is the beginning of my settings.py file:

# Django settings for OmniCloud project.

DEBUG = True
TEMPLATE_DEBUG = DEBUG

ADMINS = (
# ('Your Name', '[email protected]'),
)

MANAGERS = ADMINS

DATABASES = {
'default': {
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'postgresql', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
    'NAME': '~/Harold-Server/OmniCloud.db',                      # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
    'USER': '',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
    'PASSWORD': '',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
    'HOST': '',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
    'PORT': '',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
}
}

The only thing you need to do is create the folder (as it doesn't exist already), only the database file will be created by the program. This really worked for me!

In my case, the solution was to use an absolute path, to find an existing file:

import os.path
filepath = os.path.abspath(filepath)
# Leave this out if the file doesn't exist yet
assert os.path.exists(filepath), "The file doesn't exist"
conn = sqlite3.connect(filepath)

I don't know why this fix works: the path only contained ASCII characters and no spaces. Still it made the difference.

For reference: Windows 7, Python 3.6.5 (64-bit).

I was not able to reproduce the issue on another machine (also Windows 7, Python 3.6.4 64-bit), so I have no idea why this fix works.

I faced exactly same issue. Here is my setting which worked.

'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', 
'NAME': '/home/path/to/your/db/data.sqlite3'

Other setting in case of sqlite3 will be same/default.
And you need to create data.sqlite3.

In my case the sqlite db file db.sqlite3 was stored in the DocumentRoot of apache. So, even after setting the following permissions it didn't work:

sudo chown www-data:www-data /path/to/db-folder
sudo chown www-data:www-data /path/to/db-folder/sqlite-db.db

Finally when i moved db.sqlite3 to a newly created folder dbfolder under DocumentRoot and gave the above permissions, and it worked.

This is definitely a permissions issue. If someone is getting this error on linux, make sure you're running the command with sudo as the file most likely is owned by root. Hope that helps!

You haven't specified the absolute path - you've used a shortcut , ~, which might not work in this context. Use /home/yourusername/Harold-Server/OmniCloud.db instead.

Make sure you are not editing the settings.py file while trying to run syncdb, you will get the same error!!!

self.connection = Database.connect(**kwargs)
sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file

Run into the error on Windows, added assert os.path.exists, double checked the path, run the script as administrator, nothing helped.

Turns out if you add your folders to the Windows Defender's Ransomware Protection, you can no longer use other programs to write there unless you add these programs to the Controlled Folder Access' whitelist.

Solution - check if your folder has been added to the Windows Defender's Ransomware Protection and remove it for faster fix.

One reason might be running the code in a path that doesn't match with your specified path for the database. For example if in your code you have:

conn = lite.connect('folder_A/my_database.db')

And you run the code inside the folder_A or other places that doesn't have a folder_A it will raise such error. The reason is that SQLite will create the database file if it doesn't exist not the folder.

One other way for getting around this problem might be wrapping your connecting command in a try-except expression and creating the directory if it raises sqlite3.OperationalError.

from os import mkdir import sqlite3 as lite

try:
    conn = lite.connect('folder_A/my_database.db')
except lite.OperationalError:
    mkdir('folder_A')
finally:
    conn = lite.connect('folder_A/my_database.db')

For any one who has a problem with airflow linked to this issue.

In my case, I've initialized airflow in /root/airflow and run its scheduler as root. I used the run_as_user parameter to impersonate the web user while running task instances. However airflow was always failing to trigger my DAG with the following errors in logs:

sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file
...
sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError: (sqlite3.OperationalError) unable to open database file

I also found once I triggered a DAG manually, a new airflow resource directory was automatically created under /home/web. I'm not clear about this behavior, but I make it work by removing the entire airflow resources from /root, reinitializing airflow database under /home/web and running the scheduler as web under:

[root@host ~]# rm -rf airflow
[web@host ~]$ airflow initdb
[web@host ~]$ airflow scheduler -D

If you want to try this approach, I may need to backup your data before doing anything.

Primary diagnosis: SQLite is unable to open that file for some reason.

Checking the obvious reasons why, and in approximate order that I recommend checking:

• Is the program running on the same machine as you're testing it?
• Is it running as you (or at least the same user as you're testing it as)?
• Is the disk containing /tmp full? (You're on Unix, so use df /tmp to find out.)
• Does the /tmp/cer directory have “odd” permissions? (SQLite needs to be able to create additional files in it in order to handle things like the commit log.)
• Is the unit test code still using that database? (Concurrent opens are possible with a modern-enough SQLite and when in the right filesystem — though /tmp is virtually always on the right sort of FS so it's probably not that — but it's still not recommended.)
• Is the development code really trying to write to that database, or is something “clever” catching you out and causing it to try to open something else? (I've been caught out by this in my code in the past; don't think it can't happen to you…)
• Are you using the same version of the SQLite library in the unit tests and the production code?

If you're not on the same machine, it's quite possible that the production system doesn't have a /tmp/cer directory. Obvious to fix that first. Similarly, if you're on the same machine but running as different users, you're likely to have permissions/ownership problems. Disk space is another serious gotcha, but less likely. I don't think it's the last three, but they're worth checking if the more obvious deployment problems are sorted. If it's none of the above, you've hit an exotic problem and will have to report much more info (it might even be a bug in SQLite, but knowing the developers of it, I believe that to be quite unlikely).

This worked for me:

conn = sqlite3.connect("C:\\users\\guest\\desktop\\example.db")

Note: Double slashes in the full path

Using python v2.7 on Win 7 enterprise and Win Xp Pro

Hope this helps someone.

import sqlite3

connection = sqlite3.connect("d:\\pythonAPI\\data.db")
cursor = connection.cursor()
create_table = "CREATE TABLE users (id int, username text, password text)"
cursor.execute(create_table)

for clearer full path if you didn't get it clear

On unix I got that error when using the ~ shortcut for the user directory. Changing it to /home/user resolved the error.

My reason was very foolish. I had dropped the manage.py onto the terminal so it was running using the full path. And I had changed the name of the folder of the project. So now, the program was unable to find the file with the previous data and hence the error.

Make sure you restart the software in such cases.

I had this problem serving with Apache and found that using the absolute path to the sqlite3 db in my .env //// as opposed to using the relative path /// fixed the problem. All of the permissions and ownership mentioned above are necessary as well.

had the same problem but top answer is too long for me so I suggest to open another shell window type cd #enter and try again

1) Verify your database path, check in your settings.py

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'CONN_MAX_AGE': 0,
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'project.db'),
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'PORT': '',
        'USER':''

some times there wont be NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'project.db'),

2)Be sure for the permission and ownership to destination folder

it worked for me,

use this type it works for me . windows 7 with python 2.7 and django 1.5

'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
'NAME': 'C:\\tool\\mysite\\data.db',

hope its works...

Use the fully classified name of database file

Use- /home/ankit/Desktop/DS/Week-7-MachineLearning/Week-7-MachineLearning/soccer/database.sqlite

instead-

I faced the same problem on Windows 7. My database name was test and I got the error:

self.connection = Database.connect(**kwargs)
sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file

I replaced test with test.db and and all went smooth.

If this happens randomly after correctly being able to access your database (and no settings have changed), it could be a result of a corrupted database.

I got this error after trying to write to my database from two processes at the same time and it must have corrupted my db.sqlite3 file.

My solution was to revert back to a previous commit before the corruption happened.

in my case, i tried creating the sqlite db in /tmp folder and from all the slashes i missed a single slash

Instead of sqlite:///tmp/mydb.sqlite -> sqlite:////tmp/mydb.sqlite ...

You need to use full path instead of ~/.

In your case, something like /home/harold/Harold-Server/OmniCloud.db.

Ran into this issue while trying to create an index on a perfectly valid database. Turns out it will throw this error (in addition to other reasons described here) if the sqlite temp_store_directory variable/directory is unwritable.

Solution: change temp_store_directory with c.execute(f'PRAGMA temp_store_directory = "{writable_directory}"'). Note that this pragma is being deprecated and I am not yet sure what the replacement will be.