60

I am trying to upload image through admin page, but it keeps saying: 

[Errno 13] Permission denied: '/path/to/my/site/media/userfolder/2014/05/26'

the folders userfolder/2014/05/26 are created dynamically while uploading.

In Traceback, i found that the error is occuring during this command:

In /usr/lib64/python2.6/os.py Line 157. while calling 

mkdir(name, mode)

meaning, it cannot create any folder as it doesnot have the permission to do this

I have OpenSuse as OS in Server. In httpd.conf, i have this: 

<Directory /path/to/my/site/media>
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from all
</Directory>

Do I have to chmod or chown something?

falsetru
  • 357,413
  • 63
  • 732
  • 636
doniyor
  • 36,596
  • 57
  • 175
  • 260
  • Make sure the directory `/path/to/my/site/media` is writable by web server process. – falsetru May 26 '14 at 13:04
  • 1
    `ps aux | grep apache` will show you what user own the process. – falsetru May 26 '14 at 13:07
  • @falsetru this shows me ``root``. so this is my django code, right? – doniyor May 26 '14 at 13:07
  • What about `ps aux | grep httpd | grep -v grep` or `ps aux | grep apache | grep -v grep` ? – falsetru May 26 '14 at 13:10
  • @falsetru 2nd command doesnt show anything, 1st one shows many processes the first one is of root, the rest is of httpd. – doniyor May 26 '14 at 13:12
  • You should change ownership of the directory `/path/to/my/site/media` or change permission so that `httpd` user can write there. – falsetru May 26 '14 at 13:13
  • 1
    `chown -R httpd:httpd /path/to/my/site/media` (the second `httpd` is group name. You need to change it if the group of the `httpd` is different from `httpd`) – falsetru May 26 '14 at 13:16

8 Answers8

48

You need to change the directory permission so that web server process can change the directory.

  • To change ownership of the directory, use chown:

    chown -R user-id:group-id /path/to/the/directory

  • To see which user own the web server process (change httpd accordingly):

    ps aux | grep httpd | grep -v grep

    OR

    ps -efl | grep httpd | grep -v grep
falsetru
  • 357,413
  • 63
  • 732
  • 636
  • I'm using gunicorn. I get same error message. I want to give gunicorn read/write access to a folder under /home/portfolio. How do I go about it? – KhoPhi Jan 30 '15 at 22:45
  • @Rexford, You'd better post a separated question with `gevent` tag. – falsetru Jan 31 '15 at 02:33
  • @falsetru I solved the issue by changing the owner of main folders and it's subdirectory/files to www-data. I am using flask+apache for backend server. Thanks for your guidance. – Ajay Jun 01 '17 at 15:27
24

This may also happen if you have a slash before the folder name:

path = '/folder1/folder2'

OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/folder1'

comes up with an error but this one works fine:

path = 'folder1/folder2'
mjp
  • 1,618
  • 2
  • 22
  • 37
  • 15
    It is worth explaining _why_ this happens. A `/` before the folder name in Unix indicates that the folder should exist in the root directory, which also houses all the major sensitive system folders e.g. `/usr/`, `/bin/`, etc. (try it, do `cd /` and see where you land up). Ordinary processes are not permitted to modify the root directory. Omitting a leading `/` defaults the folder to the current working directory, which is perfectly safe and which Unix will do for you. – Akshat Mahajan Aug 23 '16 at 17:59
  • @mjp When i tried to remove the first slash from 'folder1/' it indeed worked and the error was gone, however i have no idea were that folder is now? So where is it? How do i access it? thanks – masky007 Nov 01 '18 at 02:42
  • I created a folder called folder1 in you current directory – yasin mohammed Feb 11 '20 at 14:14
1

Probably you are facing problem when a download request is made by the maybe_download function call in base.py file.

There is a conflict in the permissions of the temporary files and I myself couldn't work out a way to change the permissions, but was able to work around the problem.

Do the following...

  • Download the four .gz files of the MNIST data set from the link ( http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/ )
  • Then make a folder names MNIST_data (or your choice in your working directory/ site packages folder in the tensorflow\examples folder).
  • Directly copy paste the files into the folder.
  • Copy the address of the folder (it probably will be ( C:\Python\Python35\Lib\site-packages\tensorflow\examples\tutorials\mnist\MNIST_data ))
  • Change the "\" to "/" as "\" is used for escape characters, to access the folder locations.
  • Lastly, if you are following the tutorials, your call function would be ( mnist = input_data.read_data_sets("MNIST_data/", one_hot=True) ) ; change the "MNIST_data/" parameter to your folder location. As in my case would be ( mnist = input_data.read_data_sets("C:/Python/Python35/Lib/site-packages/tensorflow/examples/tutorials/mnist/MNIST_data", one_hot=True) )

Then it's all done. Hope it works for you.

Karan Chopra
  • 174
  • 8
1

Another option is to ensure the file is not open anywhere else on your machine.

Jacob Weiss
  • 41
  • 4
  • This only applies to Windows. It looks like this question is directed at Linux. There these restrictions do not exist – Dick Kniep Jan 03 '19 at 13:52
1

supplementing @falsetru's answer : run id in the terminal to get your user_id and group_id

Go the directory/partition where you are facing the challenge. Open terminal, type id then press enter. This will show you your user_id and group_id

then type

chown -R user-id:group-id .

Replace user-id and group-id

. at the end indicates current partition / repository

// chown -R 1001:1001 . (that was my case)

dejanualex
  • 3,872
  • 6
  • 22
  • 37
Kisakyamukama
  • 99
  • 1
  • 10
0

Simply try:

sudo cp /source /destination
razimbres
  • 4,715
  • 5
  • 23
  • 50
0

Just close the file in case it is opened in the background. The error disappears by itself

ButchMonkey
  • 1,873
  • 18
  • 30
Balaji
  • 1
0

The solution that worked out for me here when I was using python 3 os package for performing operations on a directory where I didn't have sufficient permissions and access to got resolved by running the python file with sudo (root) i.e.:

sudo python python_file_name.py

Any other utility that you might also plan on using to chmod or chown that directory would also only work when you run it with sudo.

# file_name.py
base_path = "./parent_dir/child_dir/"
user = os.stat(base_path).st_uid # for getting details of the current user owner of the dir
group = os.stat(base_path).st_gid # for getting details of the current group owner of the dir

print("Present owner and group of the specified path")
print("Owner:", user)
print("Group:", group)
os.chown(base_path, user, group) # change directory permissions

print("\nOwner id of the file:", os.stat(base_path).st_uid)
print("Group id of the file:", os.stat(base_path).st_gid)
os.mkdir(base_path+file_name,mode=0o666)

run the above file with sudo.

sudo python file_name.py

Hope this answer works out for you.

Forever indebted to stackoverflow and the dev community. All hail the devs.

dhruv sharma
  • 41
  • 4