Why can’t I run virtualenv without root

centos6.2virtualenv

I'm trying to run virtual env and all the documentation says I don't need to run it as root (and probably shouldn't). If I run it as root, everything works. If I run it without root, I get:

[stats@crunch ~]$ virtualenv env
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/virtualenv", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2655, in <module>
    working_set.require(__requires__)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 648, in require
    needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 546, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: virtualenv==1.7.1.2

I believe I can change the ownership and it's the same difference, but I'd like to know why this is happening. It's a fresh CentOS 6.2 installation.

Best Answer

easy_install had installed virtualenv without read permissions for group or world (only execute). Any idea why that happens?

Doing chmod -R 755 on the /usr/lib/python/site-packages/virtualenv directory resolved the issue.

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