pip install failing with OSError Errno 13 Permission denied on directory

Question

pip install -r requirements txt fails with the exception below OSError   Errno 13  Permission denied    usr local lib      What s wrong and how do I fix this   I am trying to setup Django   Installing collected packages  amqp  anyjson  arrow  beautifulsoup4  billiard  boto  braintree  celery  cffi  cryptography  Django  django-bower  django-braces  django-celery  django-crispy-forms  django-debug-toolbar  django-disqus  django-embed-video  django-filter  django-merchant  django-pagination  django-payments  django-storages  django-vote  django-wysiwyg-redactor  easy-thumbnails  enum34  gnureadline  idna  ipaddress  ipython  kombu  mock  names  ndg-httpsclient  Pillow  pyasn1  pycparser  pycrypto  PyJWT  pyOpenSSL  python-dateutil  pytz  requests  six  sqlparse  stripe  suds-jurko Cleaning up    Exception  Traceback  most recent call last     File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip basecommand py   line 122  in main     status   self run options  args    File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip commands install py   line 283  in run     requirement set install install options  global options  root options root path    File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip req py   line 1436  in install     requirement install install options  global options   args    kwargs    File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip req py   line 672  in install     self move wheel files self source dir  root root    File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip req py   line 902  in move wheel files     pycompile self pycompile    File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip wheel py   line 206  in move wheel files     clobber source  lib dir  True    File   usr lib python2 7 dist-packages pip wheel py   line 193  in clobber     os makedirs destsubdir    File   usr lib python2 7 os py   line 157  in makedirs     mkdir name  mode  OSError   Errno 13  Permission denied    usr local lib python2 7 dist-packages amqp-1 4 6 dist-info

User · Answer

If you need permissions  you cannot use  pip  with  sudo   You can do a trick  so that you can use  sudo  and install package  Just place  sudo python -m      in front of your pip command  sudo python -m pip install --user -r package name

User · Answer

So  I got this same exact error for a completely different reason  Due to a totally separate  but known Homebrew   pip bug  I had followed this workaround listed on Google Cloud s help docs  where you create a  pydistutils cfg file in your home directory  This file has special config that you re only supposed to use for your install of certain libraries  I should have removed that disutils cfg file after installing the packages  but I forgot to do so  So the fix for me was actually just     rm    pydistutils cfg    And then everything worked as normal  Of course  if you have some config in that file for a real reason  then you won t want to just straight rm that file  But in case anyone else did that workaround  and forgot to remove that file  this did the trick for me

User · Answer

You are trying to install a package on the system-wide path without having the permission to do so   In general  you can use sudo to temporarily obtain superuser permissions at your responsibility in order to install the package on the system-wide path   sudo pip install -r requirements txt  Find more about sudo here  Actually  this is a bad idea and there s no good use case for it  see  wim s comment   If you don t want to make system-wide changes  you can install the package on your per-user path using the --user flag  All it takes is   pip install --user runloop requirements txt   Finally  for even finer grained control  you can also use a virtualenv  which might be the superior solution for a development environment  especially if you are working on multiple projects and want to keep track of each one s dependencies  After activating your virtualenv with   my-virtualenv bin activate the following command will install the package inside the virtualenv  and not on the system-wide path   pip install -r requirements txt

User · Answer

Option a  Create a virtualenv  activate it and install   virtualenv  venv source  venv bin activate pip install -r requirements txt   Option b  Install in your homedir   pip install --user -r requirements txt   My recommendation use safe  a  option  so that requirements of this project do not interfere with other projects requirements

User · Answer

Just clarifying what worked for me after much pain in linux  ubuntu based  on permission denied errors  and leveraging from Bert s answer above  I now use        pip install --user  lt package-name gt    or if running pip on a requirements file        pip install --user -r requirements txt   and these work reliably for every pip install including creating virtual environments   However  the cleanest solution in my further experience has been to install python-virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper with sudo apt-get install at the system level    Then  inside virtual environments  use pip install without the --user flag AND without sudo  Much cleaner  safer  and easier overall

User · Answer

We should really stop advising the use of sudo with pip install  It s better to first try pip install --user  If this fails then take a look at the top post here   The reason you shouldn t use sudo is as follows   When you run pip with sudo  you are running arbitrary Python code from the Internet as a root user  which is quite a big security risk  If someone puts up a malicious project on PyPI and you install it  you give an attacker root access to your machine

User · Answer

It is due permission problem   sudo chown -R  USER  path to your python installed directory   default it would be  usr local lib python2 7   or try   pip install --user -r package name   and then say  pip install -r requirements txt this will install inside your env  dont say  sudo pip install -r requirements txt this is will install into arbitrary python path

User · Answer

User doesn t have write permission for some Python installation paths  You can give the permission by   sudo chown -R  USER  absolute path to directory   So you should give permission  then try to install it again  if you have new paths you should also give permission   sudo chown -R  USER  usr local lib python2 7

[python] pip install failing with: OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied on directory

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