Permissions problem OSX

[mzdnick]

I've run into an issue with installing and running livestreamer. In order to install it I need to run it as root, and by doing so it seems to get installed to a root directory that I can't access without root access. This wouldn't be an issue but I can't run live livestreamer as root due to VLC not allowing it.

Running without root access gives "-bash: livestreamer: command not found"
Running with root gives (and --yes-run-as-root): "Failed to start player: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC (Process exited prematurely)"

Has anyone on OSX experienced this and/or know how to get around it? Thanks.

[skulblakka]

I'm using livestreamer without any issue on my mac. I can simply run it by entering "livestreamer" into Terminal without having root access. But maybe looking into #147 and/or #355 will help you.

[mzdnick]

Thanks for the help, I've looked into both of those but to no avail.

#147 was a broken cache file, one that I don't even have yet as I haven't been able to run livestreamer yet.
#355 actually looks like my error, but sadly the solution he found was just reinstalling OSX, something I'm not sure I want to do or need to do on a macbook that's less than 24 hours old.

Regardless, I appreciate the effort.

[chrippa]

There was a bunch of workarounds proposed in #355, none of them helped you either?

[bsdlp]

You don't want to install packages as root.

[mzdnick]

@chrippa That was the first place I went to when I ran into this and tried everything there, he had the same problem and his only solution was to reinstall OSX.

@fly I understand that causes issues, which might be causing this, but I have no other choice but to install it as root, it simply does not install otherwise and throws a permissions error.

[medina]

re: finding yourself needing to install / run Python things as root, or having many Python libraries you work on, I suggest using virtualenv and the helpful virtualenvwrapper which will try to keep everything you pip install in a separate directory structure under your account.

So try:

$ sudo pip install virtualenv


# This creates a separate directory named "PyEnvs" under your account to install into
$ virtualenv "~/PyEnvs/livestreamer"
New python executable in ~/PyEnvs/livestreamer/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.


# Go into the directory separate directory and install, no root perms should be needed
$ source "~/PyEnvs/livestreamer/bin/activate"
(livestreamer)$ pip install livestreamer
Downloading/unpacking livestreamer
[...package + other dependencies isntalled...]
Successfully installed livestreamer singledispatch requests six
Cleaning up...


# if you want to leave this separate directory
(livestreamer)$ deactivate
$


# Next time you want to use livestreamer, something like this "just works", no root needed
$ source "~/PyEnvs/livestreamer/bin/activate"
(livestreamer)$ livestreamer http://www.twitch.tv/sc2proleague best

[mzdnick]

@medina Thank you so much for that write up, it worked perfectly and everything works exactly as it should now. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.

[medina]

Glad to hear it, @NickTompk!

@chrippa maybe "use virtualenv" could go in the wiki or FAQ as a best practice for installing w/o permission issues or dependency conflicts.