Composer: file_put_contents(./composer.json): failed to open stream: Permission denied

Question

I'm trying to install Prestissimo to an Ubuntu 16.04 server, but that leads to an error:

$ composer global require "hirak/prestissimo:^0.3"
Changed current directory to /home/kramer65/.composer


  [ErrorException]
  file_put_contents(./composer.json): failed to open stream: Permission denied


require [--dev] [--prefer-source] [--prefer-dist] [--no-progress] [--no-update] [--no-scripts] [--update-no-dev] [--update-with-dependencies] [--ignore-platform-reqs] [--prefer-stable] [--prefer-lowest] [--sort-packages] [-o|--optimize-autoloader] [-a|--classmap-authoritative] [--] [<packages>]...

I'm logged in as user kramer65 , so I wouldn't know why it can't write to my home folder. My normal reaction to a permission denied is to use sudo , but composer then always says:

Do not run Composer as root/super user! See https://getcomposer.org/root for details

Any idea how I can solve this?

Answer 1

I had this problem to install laravel/lumen.

It can be resolved with the following command:

$ sudo chown -R $USER ~/.composer/

Answer 2

To resolve this, you should open up a terminal window and type this command:

sudo chown -R user ~/.composer (with user being your current user, in your case, kramer65 )

After you have ran this command, you should have permission to run your composer global require command.

You may also need to remove the .composer file from the current directory, to do this open up a terminal window and type this command:

sudo rm -rf .composer

Answer 3

For me, in Ubuntu 18.04. I needed to chown inside ~/.config/composer/

Eg

sudo chown -R $USER ~/.config/composer

Then global commands work.

Answer 4

In my case I don't have issues with ~/.composer .
So being inside Laravel app root folder, I did sudo chown -R $USER composer.lock and it was helpful.

Answer 5

In my case, .composer was owned by root, so I did sudo rm -fr .composer and then my global require worked.

Be warned! You don't wanna use that command if you are not sure what you are doing.

Answer 6

I faced this issue as well but in my case, I was in wrong directory. Check the directory you are working

Answer 7

This might be super edge case, but if you are using Travis CI and taking advantage of caching, you might want to clear all cache and retry.

Fixed my issue when I was going from sudo to non sudo builds.

Answer 8

I was getting the same exception, but in my case I am using PowerShell to run commands So, I fixed this with an instruction to unblock multiple files first. PS C:\\> dir C:\\executable_file_Path\\*PowerShell* | Unblock-File PS C:\\> dir C:\\executable_file_Path\\*PowerShell* | Unblock-File and then use the following to load the package & 'C:\\path_to_executable\\php.exe' "c:\\path_to_composer_.phar_file\\composer.phar "require desired/package

Answer 9

In my case I used sudo mkdir projectFolder to create folder. It was owned by root user and I was logged in using non root user.

So I changed the folder permission using command sudo chown mynonrootuser:mynonrootuser projectFolder and then it worked fine.

Answer 10

在 WSL Windows 10 中使用它时我遇到了同样的错误。我使用以下命令来解决它：-

sudo chown -R $USER  /home/<username>/.config/composer

Answer 11

I had same issue in windows version of composer that has installed in

C:\\composer

When I was trying this command

C:\\composer require aws/aws-sdk-php

then simply I got into composer installed folder and try it again

C:\\composer>composer require aws/aws-sdk-php

the package installed quickly .

Answer 12

In my case all the permissions were correct at all the locations manetioned in other answers here, but I was still getting this error.

Turned out there were some vendor directories that were owned by root. Composer writes composer.lock files all over the place when it's doing an update or install.

So solving my case - and this is specifically for a laravel sail container - all ownerships were switched to user sail in the project:

Enter the sail container as root:

vendor/bin/sail root-shell

Set the file ownership for all files in the project:

chown -R sail:sail /var/www/html

You may just want to do the vendor directory only as a first try:

chown -R sail:sail /var/www/html/vendor

The ownership was wrong after switching from a hand-rolled docker-compose.yaml setup to Laravel Sail, which IMO handles file ownership and permissions in a sensible way, separating root from the application user sail .

Answer 13

I was facing the same issue when I was running the composer require inside /var/www/html ,the default root folder of the apache web server and I was able to solve it by making the current user the owner of this html directory by

sudo chown -R $USER /var/www/html

But you definitely want to set the permissions

chmod 755 -R /var/www/html

Answer 14

There are 2 components to consider.

Composer wants you to run it as the logged in user. However, your webserver wants to have permissions over your application.

The solution is to add your user to the webserver group, then update the permissions of your application.

For Ubuntu running Apache webserver, use the following command to add yourself to the Apache group, replacing <username> with your username

    sudo usermod -a -G www-data <username>

Now you need to update your permissions on your application. Navigate to the root folder of your application and use the following command

    sudo chown -R $USER:www-data .

Composer now has the necessary permissions to pull in the packages you need and Apache has the necessary permissions to deliver your application.