error: could not create '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/virtualenv_support': Permission denied

Question

I am using ubuntu 12.04 and I am trying to pip install virtualenv but suddenly I got this error.

samuel@sampc:~$ pip install virtualenv
Downloading/unpacking         


        

Answer 1

First, sudo pip install 'package-name' means nothing it will return

sudo: pip: command not found

You get the Permission denied, you shouldn't use pip install as root anyway. You can just install the packages into your own user like mentionned above with

pip install 'package-name' --user

and it will work as you intend. If you need it in any other user just run the same command and you'll be good to go.