Question

I am trying to get the python-connect-mysql module to run, but when I execute python setup.py install on my command shell, I receive the following error:

[Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/test-easy-install-2259.write-test’

The installation directory you specified (via --install-dir, --prefix, or
the distutils default setting) was:

    /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/

I have Python 3.2 installed and need to install to /Library/Python/3.2/site-packages/

I have looked through many solutions, but do not understand the command shell very well. I tried the following to edit my bash_profile and received an error saying the file didn’t exist:
sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit ~/.bash_profile

Then I tried: touch ~/.bash_profile but didn’t know what to do once I got there–the blog I read had very sketchy instructions–so I hit exit and it logged me out.
This seems to be the biggest hurdle for me to download third party packages. I tried the sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app... method again to see if the terminal would let me open up the bash_profile since I had touched it and received an error message that I do not have permission to open the file. Can someone please help? I am going crazy!

Answer 1

While using sudo is a possibility, you should always use virtualenv to manage your python modules in case somebody decides to replace setup.py with some kind of malicious code (and seriously, who looks at the code of setup.py everytime when installing a new module) that giving root rights to execute wouldn’t exactly benefit your system.