How to avoid "Permission denied" when using pip with virtualenv

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?

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

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.

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