Why do I get sqlite error, “unable to open database file”?

Question

Using my Django app, I'm able to read from the database just fine. When the application didn't have permission to access the file, it gave me this error:

attempt to write a readonly database

Which made sense. So I edited the permissions on the file, so that the Apache process had write permissions. However, instead of it being able to write, I get this cryptic error:

unable to open database file

If it's useful, here's the entire output:

Request Method: POST
Request URL:    http://home-sv-1/hellodjango1/polls/1/vote/
Exception Type: OperationalError
Exception Value:    
unable to open database file
Exception Location: /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.5/django/db/backends/sqlite3/base.py in execute, line 193
Python Executable:  /usr/bin/python
Python Version: 2.5.2
Python Path:    ['/var/www', '/usr/lib/python2.5', '/usr/lib/python2.5/plat-linux2', '/usr/lib/python2.5/lib-tk', '/usr/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.5', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.5/gtk-2.0']
Server time:    Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:06:08 -0500

Let me know if a stack trace is necessary.

Answer 1

Aha, just stumbled across an article explaining this. Also Django have info on their NewbieMistakes page.

The solution is to make sure the directory containing the database file also has write access allowed to the process.

In my case, running this command fixed the problem:

chown www-data. .

Answer 2

see also http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/NewbieMistakes#DjangosaysUnabletoOpenDatabaseFilewhenusingSQLite3

Answer 3

The development server needs to be run as the same user who has write perms on the database folder, so if you originally created the database as root, you will need to be root when you run:

python manage.py runserver