Virtualenv permission denied

Question

After a lot of struggle with virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper I decided to remove all virtualenvs and re-install the packages.

root> su myuser
myuser> sudo pip install virtualenv
myuser> sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

I proceeded to add this to my unix users .bashrc file.

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python2.7
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

When I source .bashrc I get about 20 error lines ending with IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/root/.virtualenvs/premkproject'. I'm running out of ideas...

I have done my homework and tried every suggested solution I could find. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04.

Answer 1

I had the same problem and it was due to .virtualenvs having owner and group root. So the following would fix it (substituting ubuntu:ubuntu for your user and groups):

cd ~ sudo chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu .virtualenvs/

I used the recursive option as I had a problem installing a package with pip and that was due to a file lower down the hierarchy also having a permissions problem.

Answer 2

You never explained in which SO are you working...So if you are in Mac OS X you can easily fix it by giving eXecute permissions. I believe Linux may face the very same problem altought I myself never got this problem under Linux. The 'magic words' are the following :

chmod 755 <your path>/virtualenv.py