installing gurobi in python requires root access

Answered

Joris Kinable

• June 06, 2019 09:30

Installing Gurobi with the python anaconda package manager is easy and does not require root access. A regular user can simply create a new virtual environment and install the gurobi package:

> conda create --name gurobi-env gurobi

However, how can a regular user use gurobi with a different package manager? Gurobi is installed in /opt/gurobi to make it system-wide available. Regular (non-root) users can read and execute the various gurobi scripts. Similar to the Anaconda example, a user would typically spawn a virtual python environment, and install gurobi locally. To this extend, gurobi provides a setup.py script.
1. spawn the virtual environment:
> python3 -m venv gurobi-env
2. install gurobi (needs to be executed from within the gurobi directory)
> python setup.py install
The last command will throw an exception:
error: could not create 'build': Permission denied
The reason obviously is that a regular user does not have write permissions within the gurobi directory (/opt/gurobi). Clearly, giving all gurobi users sudo permissions just to run this simple script is undesirable.

It seems that some modifications to the install script are required. Clearly a user should not require root access to install gurobi in a local python environment. Any suggestions? Can this be fixed in the next gurobi release?

 

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• Official comment

  

  Simranjit Kaur

  Gurobi Staff

  • December 06, 2024 00:58

  This post is more than three years old. Some information may not be up to date. For current information, please check the Gurobi Documentation or Knowledge Base. If you need more help, please create a new post in the community forum. Or why not try our AI Gurobot?.
• 

  Daniel Espinoza

  • June 06, 2019 19:57

  A dirty way to avoid the issue is to copy /opt/gurobi to a local/user directory, and run from there....

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• 

  Joris Kinable

  • June 07, 2019 16:55

  

  

  

  It turns out, the solution is quite easy. Instead of invoking:

  >python setup.py install

  one can simply invoke:

  > python setup.py build -b /tmp/gurobi install

  The -b flag specifies a custom build directory. So in summary, to install gurobi in a venv environment without sudo permissions:
  
  1. Create a virtual environment:
  > python3 -m venv gurobi-env
  2. Activate the virtual environment:
  > source ./gurobi-env/bin/activate
  3. Change to the gurobi install dir:
  > cd /opt/gurobi811/linux64/
  4. Install gurobi with a custom build path
  > python setup.py build -b /tmp/gurobi install

   

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