flair PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/root/.cache'

Question

I am calling the python script with the flair package with a www-data user (no sudo rights). The models are in path for which that user has access rights, which I have set flair.cache_root = Path("tools/flair")

However, when I run the script with that user I get a Permission Error:

tagger = MultiTagger.load([\\\"flair/ner-german-large\\\", \\\"de-pos\\\"])\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/flair/models/sequence_tagger_model.py\\\", line 1330, in load\
model = SequenceTagger.load(model_name)\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/flair/nn.py\\\", line 88, in load\
state = torch.load(f, map_location='cpu')\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/torch/serialization.py\\\", line 594, in load\
return _load(opened_zipfile, map_location, pickle_module, **pickle_load_args)\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/torch/serialization.py\\\", line 853, in _load\
result = unpickler.load()\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/flair/embeddings/token.py\\\", line 1297, in __setstate__\
state_dict=d[\\\"model_state_dict\\\"],\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/flair/embeddings/token.py\\\", line 818, in __init__\
self.tokenizer: PreTrainedTokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model, **kwargs)\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/transformers/models/auto/tokenization_auto.py\\\", line 435, in from_pretrained\
return tokenizer_class_fast.from_pretrained(pretrained_model_name_or_path, *inputs, **kwargs)\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/transformers/tokenization_utils_base.py\\\", line 1680, in from_pretrained\
user_agent=user_agent,\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/transformers/file_utils.py\\\", line 1279, in cached_path\
local_files_only=local_files_only,\
File \\\"/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/transformers/file_utils.py\\\", line 1426, in get_from_cache\
os.makedirs(cache_dir, exist_ok=True)\
File \\\"/usr/lib/python3.7/os.py\\\", line 211, in makedirs\
makedirs(head, exist_ok=exist_ok)\
File \\\"/usr/lib/python3.7/os.py\\\", line 211, in makedirs\
makedirs(head, exist_ok=exist_ok)\
File \\\"/usr/lib/python3.7/os.py\\\", line 221, in makedirs\
mkdir(name, mode)\
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/root/.cache'\

Can I avoid using /root/.cache? I don't want to edit the read-write rights of that directory. If I run the script as root it works fine. How do I run it as the other user? I am running it on Ubuntu.

Answer 1

The error is caused by the transformer model that flair loads. The cache directory for transformers has to be specified in additional by setting the environment variable TRANSFORMERS_CACHE=/path/to/transformers

Answer 2

Use below code in your script before creating model instance.

import os
import flair

os.environ['FLAIR_CACHE_ROOT'] = './cache'
flair.cache_root = Path(os.environ['FLAIR_CACHE_ROOT']+"/my/path/.flair")