IOError when installing pycairo on Python 2.7 environment

Question

When I try to install matplotlib into my Python 2.7 environment, pycairo gives me the following error:

$ conda install matplotlib
Fetching package metadata .........
Solving package specifications: .

Package plan for installation in environment /home/takaya/.conda/envs/createbin:

The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

    cairo:        1.14.8-0         
    cycler:       0.10.0-py27_0    
    matplotlib:   2.0.2-np113py27_0
    pixman:       0.34.0-0         
    pycairo:      1.10.0-py27_0    
    pyparsing:    2.2.0-py27_0     
    subprocess32: 3.2.7-py27_0     

Proceed ([y]/n)? y

ERROR conda.core.link:_execute_actions(337): An error occurred while installing package 'defaults::pycairo-1.10.0-py27_0'.
IOError(13, 'Permission denied')
Attempting to roll back.


IOError(13, 'Permission denied')

The packages installed in the enviroment are:

# packages in environment at /home/takaya/.conda/envs/createbin:
#
backports                 1.0                      py27_0  
backports_abc             0.5                      py27_0  
bkcharts                  0.2                      py27_0  
bleach                    1.5.0                    py27_0  
bokeh                     0.12.7                   py27_0  
certifi                   2016.2.28                py27_0  
cloudpickle               0.4.0                    py27_0  
configparser              3.5.0                    py27_0  
dask                      0.15.2                   py27_0  
dbus                      1.10.20                       0  
decorator                 4.1.2                    py27_0  
entrypoints               0.2.3                    py27_0  
enum34                    1.1.6                    py27_0  
expat                     2.1.0                         0  
fontconfig                2.12.1                        3  
freetype                  2.5.5                         2  
functools32               3.2.3.2                  py27_0  
futures                   3.1.1                    py27_0  
get_terminal_size         1.0.0                    py27_0  
glib                      2.50.2                        1  
gst-plugins-base          1.8.0                         0  
gstreamer                 1.8.0                         0  
html5lib                  0.9999999                py27_0  
icu                       54.1                          0  
ipykernel                 4.6.1                    py27_0  
ipython                   5.3.0                    py27_0  
ipython_genutils          0.2.0                    py27_0  
ipywidgets                6.0.0                    py27_0  
jinja2                    2.9.6                    py27_0  
jpeg                      9b                            0  
jsonschema                2.6.0                    py27_0  
jupyter                   1.0.0                    py27_3  
jupyter_client            5.1.0                    py27_0  
jupyter_console           5.2.0                    py27_0  
jupyter_core              4.3.0                    py27_0  
libffi                    3.2.1                         1  
libgcc                    5.2.0                         0  
libgfortran               3.0.0                         1  
libiconv                  1.14                          0  
libpng                    1.6.30                        1  
libsodium                 1.0.10                        0  
libxcb                    1.12                          1  
libxml2                   2.9.4                         0  
locket                    0.2.0                    py27_1  
markupsafe                1.0                      py27_0  
mistune                   0.7.4                    py27_0  
mkl                       2017.0.3                      0  
nbconvert                 5.2.1                    py27_0  
nbformat                  4.4.0                    py27_0  
notebook                  5.0.0                    py27_0  
numpy                     1.13.1                   py27_0  
openssl                   1.0.2l                        0  
pandas                    0.20.3                   py27_0  
pandocfilters             1.4.2                    py27_0  
partd                     0.3.8                    py27_0  
path.py                   10.3.1                   py27_0  
pathlib2                  2.3.0                    py27_0  
pcre                      8.39                          1  
pexpect                   4.2.1                    py27_0  
pickleshare               0.7.4                    py27_0  
pip                       9.0.1                    py27_1  
prompt_toolkit            1.0.15                   py27_0  
ptyprocess                0.5.2                    py27_0  
pygments                  2.2.0                    py27_0  
pyqt                      5.6.0                    py27_2  
python                    2.7.13                        0  
python-dateutil           2.6.1                    py27_0  
pytz                      2017.2                   py27_0  
pyyaml                    3.12                     py27_0  
pyzmq                     16.0.2                   py27_0  
qt                        5.6.2                         5  
qtconsole                 4.3.1                    py27_0  
readline                  6.2                           2  
requests                  2.14.2                   py27_0  
scandir                   1.5                      py27_0  
scipy                     0.19.1              np113py27_0  
setuptools                36.4.0                   py27_1  
simplegeneric             0.8.1                    py27_1  
singledispatch            3.4.0.3                  py27_0  
sip                       4.18                     py27_0  
six                       1.10.0                   py27_0  
sqlite                    3.13.0                        0  
ssl_match_hostname        3.5.0.1                  py27_0  
terminado                 0.6                      py27_0  
testpath                  0.3.1                    py27_0  
tk                        8.5.18                        0  
toolz                     0.8.2                    py27_0  
tornado                   4.5.2                    py27_0  
traitlets                 4.3.2                    py27_0  
wcwidth                   0.1.7                    py27_0  
wheel                     0.29.0                   py27_0  
widgetsnbextension        3.0.2                    py27_0  
xarray                    0.9.6                    py27_0  
yaml                      0.1.6                         0  
zeromq                    4.1.5                         0  
zlib                      1.2.11                        0

Could you tell me how to resolve this issue? I don't encounter this problem when I'm using Python 3. Could it be a bug specific to Python 2? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I recently encountered the same problem (after going through many posts about permissions, cache etc).

The solution I found was to install the default package 1.13.3 from conda-forge instead of the default 1.10.0.

conda install -c conda-forge pycairo