PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied

Question

I'm getting this error :

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python34\lib\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1538, in __call__
return self.func(*args)
File "C:/Users/Marc/Documents/Programmation/Python/Llamachat/Llamachat/Llamachat.py", line 32, in download
with open(place_to_save, 'wb') as file:
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/goodbye.txt'

When running this :

def download():
    # get selected line index
    index = films_list.curselection()[0]
    # get the line's text
    selected_text = films_list.get(index)
    directory = filedialog.askdirectory(parent=root, 
                                        title="Choose where to save your movie")
    place_to_save = directory + '/' + selected_text
    print(directory, selected_text, place_to_save)
    with open(place_to_save, 'wb') as file:
        connect.retrbinary('RETR ' + selected_text, file.write)
    tk.messagebox.showwarning('File downloaded', 
                              'Your movie has been successfully downloaded!' 
                              '\nAnd saved where you asked us to save it!!')

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong?

Specs : Python 3.4.4 x86 Windows 10 x64

Answer 1

This happens if you are trying to open a file, but your path is a folder.

This can happen easily by mistake.

To defend against that, use:

import os

path = r"my/path/to/file.txt"
assert os.path.isfile(path)
with open(path, "r") as f:
    pass

The assertion will fail if the path is actually of a folder.

Answer 2

Make sure the file you are trying to write is closed first.

Answer 3

There are basically three main methods of achieving administrator execution privileges on Windows.

1. Running as admin from cmd.exe
2. Creating a shortcut to execute the file with elevated privileges
3. Changing the permissions on the python executable (Not recommended)

---

A) Running cmd.exe as and admin

Since in Windows there is no sudo command you have to run the terminal (cmd.exe) as an administrator to achieve to level of permissions equivalent to sudo. You can do this two ways:

1. Manually

   • Find cmd.exe in C:\Windows\system32
   • Right-click on it
   • Select Run as Administrator
   • It will then open the command prompt in the directory C:\Windows\system32
   • Travel to your project directory
   • Run your program

2. Via key shortcuts

   • Press the windows key (between alt and ctrl usually) + X.
   • A small pop-up list containing various administrator tasks will appear.
   • Select Command Prompt (Admin)
   • Travel to your project directory
   • Run your program

By doing that you are running as Admin so this problem should not persist

B) Creating shortcut with elevated privileges

1. Create a shortcut for python.exe
2. Righ-click the shortcut and select Properties
3. Change the shortcut target into something like "C:\path_to\python.exe" C:\path_to\your_script.py"
4. Click "advanced" in the property panel of the shortcut, and click the option "run as administrator"

Answer contributed by delphifirst in this question

C) Changing the permissions on the python executable (Not recommended)

This is a possibility but I highly discourage you from doing so.

It just involves finding the python executable and setting it to run as administrator every time. Can and probably will cause problems with things like file creation (they will be admin only) or possibly modules that require NOT being an admin to run.

Answer 4

Change the permissions of the directory you want to save to so that all users have read and write permissions.

Answer 5

I had a similar problem. I thought it might be with the system. But, using shutil.copytree() from the shutil module solved the problem for me!

Answer 6

In my case the problem was that I hid the file (The file had hidden attribute):
How to deal with the problem in python:

Edit: highlight the unsafe methods, thank you d33tah

# Use the method nr 1, nr 2 is vulnerable

# 1
# and just to let you know there is also this way
# so you don't need to import os
import subprocess
subprocess.check_call(["attrib", "-H", _path])


# Below one is unsafe meaning that if you don't control the filePath variable
# there is a possibility to make it so that a malicious code would be executed

import os

# This is how to hide the file
os.system(f"attrib +h {filePath}")
file_ = open(filePath, "wb")
>>> PermissionError <<<


# and this is how to show it again making the file writable again:
os.system(f"attrib -h {filePath}")
file_ = open(filePath, "wb")
# This works

Answer 7

You can run CMD as Administrator and change the permission of the directory using cacls.exe. For example:

cacls.exe c: /t /e /g everyone:F # means everyone can totally control the C: disc

Answer 8

The problem could be in the path of the file you want to open. Try and print the path and see if it is fine I had a similar problem

def scrap(soup,filenm):
htm=(soup.prettify().replace("https://","")).replace("http://","")
if ".php" in filenm or ".aspx" in filenm or ".jsp" in filenm:
    filenm=filenm.split("?")[0]
    filenm=("{}.html").format(filenm)
    print("Converted a  file into html that was not compatible")

if ".aspx" in htm:
    htm=htm.replace(".aspx",".aspx.html")
    print("[process]...conversion fron aspx")
if ".jsp" in htm:
    htm=htm.replace(".jsp",".jsp.html")
    print("[process]..conversion from jsp")
if ".php" in htm:
    htm=htm.replace(".php",".php.html")
    print("[process]..conversion from php")

output=open("data/"+filenm,"w",encoding="utf-8")
output.write(htm)
output.close()
print("{} bits of data written".format(len(htm)))

but after adding this code:

nofilenametxt=filenm.split('/')
nofilenametxt=nofilenametxt[len(nofilenametxt)-1]
if (len(nofilenametxt)==0):
    filenm=("{}index.html").format(filenm)

Answer 9

in my case. i just make the .idlerc directory hidden. so, all i had do is to that directory and make recent-files.lst unhidden after that, the problem was solved

Answer 10

I got this error as I was running a program to write to a file I had opened. After I closed the file and reran the program, the program ran without errors and worked as expected.

Answer 11

The most common reason for this could be, permission to the folder/file for that particular user.

Grant write permissions to the directory where you want to write files. You can do this by changing the ownership or permissions of the directory using the chmod or chown commands.

Example:

# Change ownership of the directory to the current user
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /path/to/directory

# Grant write permissions to the directory
sudo chmod -R 777 /path/to/directory

Answer 12

I faced a similar problem. I am using Anaconda on windows and I resolved it as follows: 1) search for "Anaconda prompt" from the start menu 2) Right click and select "Run as administrator" 3) The follow the installation steps...

This takes care of the permission issues

Answer 13

Here is how I encountered the error:

import os

path = input("Input file path: ")

name, ext = os.path.basename(path).rsplit('.', 1)
dire = os.path.dirname(path)

with open(f"{dire}\\{name} temp.{ext}", 'wb') as file:
    pass

It works great if the user inputs a file path with more than one element, like

C:\\Users\\Name\\Desktop\\Folder

But I thought that it would work with an input like

file.txt

as long as file.txt is in the same directory of the python file. But nope, it gave me that error, and I realized that the correct input should've been

.\\file.txt

Answer 14

As @gulzar said, I had the problem to write a file 'abc.txt' in my python script which was located in Z:\project\test.py:

with open('abc.txt', 'w') as file:
    file.write("TEST123")

Every time I ran a script in fact it wanted to create a file in my C drive instead Z! So I only specified full path with filename in:

with open('Z:\\project\\abc.txt', 'w') as file: ...

and it worked fine. I didn't have to add any permission nor change anything in windows.

Answer 15

That's a tricky one, because the error message lures you away from where the problem is.

When you see "__init__.py" of an imported module at the root of an permission error, you have a naming conflict. I bed a bottle of Rum, that there is "from tkinter import *" at the top of the file. Inside of TKinter, there is the name of a variable, a class or a function which is already in use anywhere else in the script.

Other symptoms would be:

1. The error is prompted immediately after the script is run.
2. The script might have worked well in previous Python versions.
3. User Mixon's long epos about administrator execution privileges has no impact at all. There would be no access errors to the files mentioned in the code from the console or other pieces of software.

Solution: Change the import line to "import tkinter" and add the namespace to tkinter methods in the code.

Answer 16

In my case, I had the file (to be read or accessed through python code) opened and unsaved.

PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'path_to_the_open_file'

I had to save and close the file to read/access, especially using pandas read (pd.read_excel, pd.read_csv etc.) or the command with open():

Answer 17

I got the same error in windows environment and python 3.11.4. In my case, the issue is the absolute path of the file is too long.

Answer 18

Insert a time.sleep(1) statement before trying to open the file.

 time.sleep(1)
 with open(place_to_save, 'wb') as file:
    connect.retrbinary('RETR ' + selected_text, file.write)

Sometimes the error is due to the file being processed by another module of the code.

If you set a small pause (such as stime.sleep(1)) before the execution of the open file statement, it will give sometime for the previous process to finish with the file before the next process tries to open the same file.

This may solve the issue if there is no actual permission problems.

Answer 19

Two easy steps to follow:

1. Close the document which is used in your script if it's open in your PC
2. Run Spyder from the Windows menu as "Run as administrator"

Error resolved.

Answer 20

This error actually also comes when using keras.preprocessing.image so for example:

img = keras.preprocessing.image.load_img(folder_path, target_size=image_size)

will throw the permission error. Strangely enough though, the problem is solved if you first import the library: from keras.preprocessing import image and only then use it. Like so:

img = image.load_img(img_path, target_size=(180,180))