Spacy: Windows 10 OSError: symbolic link privilege not held

[yooper]

Just tried to install the new models on my Windows 10 machine and received the following error:

Error Message

$ python -m spacy download en_core_web_md

    Downloading en_core_web_md-1.2.0/en_core_web_md-1.2.0.tar.gz

Collecting https://github.com/explosion/spacy-models/releases/download/en_core_web_md-1.2.0/en_core_web_md-1.2.0.tar.gz
  Downloading https://github.com/explosion/spacy-models/releases/download/en_core_web_md-1.2.0/en_core_web_md-1.2.0.tar.gz (1086.4MB)
Requirement already satisfied: spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: preshed<2.0.0,>=1.0.0 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: numpy>=1.7 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: thinc<6.6.0,>=6.5.0 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: murmurhash<0.27,>=0.26 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: cymem<1.32,>=1.30 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: ujson>=1.35 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: plac<1.0.0,>=0.9.6 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: pathlib in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: six in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: requests<3.0.0,>=2.13.0 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: dill<0.3,>=0.2 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: wrapt in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from thinc<6.6.0,>=6.5.0->spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: cytoolz<0.9,>=0.8 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from thinc<6.6.0,>=6.5.0->spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: termcolor in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from thinc<6.6.0,>=6.5.0->spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: tqdm<5.0.0,>=4.10.0 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from thinc<6.6.0,>=6.5.0->spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: pyreadline>=1.7.1 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from dill<0.3,>=0.2->spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Requirement already satisfied: toolz>=0.8.0 in c:\users\dcard\source\repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages (from cytoolz<0.9,>=0.8->thinc<6.6.0,>=6.5.0->spacy<2.0.0,>=1.7.0->en-core-web-md==1.2.0)
Building wheels for collected packages: en-core-web-md
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for en-core-web-md: started
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for en-core-web-md: finished with status 'done'
  Stored in directory: C:\Users\dcard\AppData\Local\pip\Cache\wheels\42\f7\30\a2fa8570180c270dae13ed81c30264c2dbbf9a07821886656a
Successfully built en-core-web-md
Installing collected packages: en-core-web-md
Successfully installed en-core-web-md-1.2.0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "c:\users\dcard\anaconda3\Lib\runpy.py", line 184, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", mod_spec)
  File "c:\users\dcard\anaconda3\Lib\runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\spacy\__main__.py", line 71, in <module>
    plac.Interpreter.call(CLI)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 1142, in call
    print(out)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 914, in __exit__
    self.close(exctype, exc, tb)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 952, in close
    self._interpreter.throw(exctype, exc, tb)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 964, in _make_interpreter
    arglist = yield task
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 1139, in call
    raise_(task.etype, task.exc, task.tb)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 53, in raise_
    raise exc.with_traceback(tb)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 380, in _wrap
    for value in genobj:
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 95, in gen_exc
    raise_(etype, exc, tb)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 53, in raise_
    raise exc.with_traceback(tb)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_ext.py", line 966, in _make_interpreter
    cmd, result = self.parser.consume(arglist)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\plac_core.py", line 207, in consume
    return cmd, self.func(*(args + varargs + extraopts), **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\spacy\__main__.py", line 30, in download
    cli_download(model, direct)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\spacy\cli\download.py", line 25, in download
    link_package(model_name, model, force=True)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\spacy\cli\link.py", line 27, in link_package
    symlink(model_path, link_name, force)
  File "C:\Users\dcard\Source\Repos\py-olympus\venv\lib\site-packages\spacy\cli\link.py", line 46, in symlink
    link_path.symlink_to(model_path)
  File "c:\users\dcard\anaconda3\Lib\pathlib.py", line 1297, in symlink_to
    self._accessor.symlink(target, self, target_is_directory)
  File "c:\users\dcard\anaconda3\Lib\pathlib.py", line 377, in wrapped
    return strfunc(str(pathobjA), str(pathobjB), *args)
OSError: symbolic link privilege not held
(venv)

Your Environment

• Operating System: Windows 10 64 bit
• Python Version Used: 3.5
• spaCy Version Used: 1.7.2
• Environment Information: virtualenv

[yooper]

I was able to fix the issue by running Window's git bash terminal in administrator mode.

[Rohit-Gaur]

I am facing a similar issue when I am trying to download Spacy en data. Can you help me to solve the issue?

[ines]

@Rohit-Gaur Check out #915 for more details on this. The problem here seem to be that spaCy creates a symbolic link in its data directory, and this requires admin privileges. So there are 2 possible solutions:

• Run the spacy download or spacy link commands as admin.
• Use a virtualenv instead of doing a system-wide installation. You most likely only need admin privileges to create symlinks in system directories – if you install spaCy in a user directory, this should be fine.

[elsaresearch]

Please go for a system wide installation. You can do that by:

Go to Start->All Programs-> Accessories-> Right click on Command Prompt and select "Run as administrator".

Once the command prompt is opened, pip install or conda install spacy

[lock[bot]]

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