Katherine Kosaian (Aug 28 2025 at 20:15): Katherine Kosaian (Aug 28 2025 at 20:15):Hi, I am teaching a course on Isabelle/HOL and one of my students is having issues running Isabelle (on a Windows machine). Here are two of the error messages she has gotten when trying to load Isabelle:
chmod: changing permissions of '/cygdrive/c/Users/amygi/.isabelle/Isabelle2025/host.db': Permission denied
[SQLITE_CANTOPEN] Unable to open the database file (unable to open database file)
Any thoughts on what might be causing this would be most welcome!
Katherine Kosaian (Sep 02 2025 at 14:43):Update: I think this is fixed now, but it was somewhat challenging to debug. It would be easier to use Isabelle/HOL in a course setting if the installation process was a little bit smoother.
Kevin Kappelmann (Sep 02 2025 at 14:49):Hi Katherine, do you know how the student fixed the problem?
It might be useful to report it to Makarius (who is the person in charge of the installation setup) vial the Isabelle mailing list.
Manuel Eberl (Sep 17 2025 at 15:11):My first guess with any Windows problem is always antivirus programs. Specifically, third party ones like McAfee, Kaspersky, etc. Especially when I taught functional programming there were always a few students who struggled with installing Haskell because of it.
The Windows-integrated antivirus is usually fine. But those third-party ones cause all kinds of issues (and using them is, in general, a bad idea and causes more harm than it does good).
Last updated: Oct 09 2025 at 01:37 UTC