topic SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this? in Statistical Procedures

SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this?

MaryA_Marion — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 15:18:55 GMT

I have the following code in an autoexec.

*ODS STATEMENTS RESET;
options mrecall;
%macro odsReset;
ods path reset; 
ods _ALL_ close; 
ods trace on;
ods noptitle; 
ods graphics on;
ods listing;
%mend odsReset;
%odsReset;

*ODS GRAPHICS;
*The default location is the current directory for the SAS program that generated the graphic image;
%let sasworklocation="%trim(%sysfunc(pathname(work)))";
ods listing gpath=&sasworklocation;

The past day I am getting an error message concerning disk permissions I don't understand. Please see attached file. Can you help?

Re: SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this?

Reeza — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:39:34 GMT

Explicitly set where you would like your graphs saved.

ods listing / gpath = 'path to save my graphic files';

Re: SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this?

MaryA_Marion — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 20:44:25 GMT

Thank you for the reply. I found that the following code works for different procedures. I have to include it immediately before the plot code.

ods listing gpath = '/home/u... /Stat.XXX.graphs';

ods graphics on / imagename ="DiagnosticsPanel" imagefmt=tiff;

I like each graph to have a name I chose. Am I doing it correctly?

Re: SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this?

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 06:35:46 GMT

Either your autoexec has been circumvented, or overridden by later code. Run these statements as part of your output code:

%let sasworklocation="%trim(%sysfunc(pathname(work)))";
ods listing gpath=&sasworklocation

If you use other ODS destinations, make sure that the same path is used.

Keep in mind that using the WORK location means that the images will vanish once you end your SAS session.

Re: SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this?

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 06:39:35 GMT

And please do always (as in ALWAYS) post your log by copy/pasting it into a window opened with this button:

Having to repeatedly switch between the pdf previewer and the main post while composing an answer is a PITA. And we can't copy/paste log excerpts from a picture.

Re: SAS is asking for disk permissions. What do I do to stop this?

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 08:28:54 GMT

And to give you some technical background:

Whenever you let SAS create something without an explicit absolute path, the SAS session will try to put that in its current working directory, which is the location of the script that started SAS on the backend (or a location set within that script). This location is (in server-based SAS setups) within the SAS configuration tree, where only the SAS installation user (or the superuser, as you are on UNIX) have write permission.

An absolute path starts at the root of the filesystem (/ in UNIX, or a drive letter/backslash or UNC location in Windows). SAS On Demand allows the use of the tilde (~) as an absolute path to your home directory; you could also use $HOME for that.