Yes I write the following in my .bash_profile: source firedrake/bin/activate Should it be in the .bashrc? On 28 Jan 2016, at 11:18, Lawrence Mitchell <lawrence.mitchell@imperial.ac.uk<mailto:lawrence.mitchell@imperial.ac.uk>> wrote: On 28 Jan 2016, at 10:58, Anna Kalogirou <A.Kalogirou@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:A.Kalogirou@leeds.ac.uk>> wrote: Hi David, The weird thing that is happening now is that sometimes I get this error and sometimes not. You are right: this happens when I open a new shell tab and in this case the virtualenv is not active. It tells me “ -bash: firedrake/bin/activate: No such file or directory “. This sounds like you are activating the virtualenv in your ~/.bashrc. But you haven't provided a full path to it. So sometimes you launch a new terminal in a directory such that the relative path firedrake/bin/activate exists, and sometimes it doesn't. Is this right? Lawrence _______________________________________________ firedrake mailing list firedrake@imperial.ac.uk<mailto:firedrake@imperial.ac.uk> https://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/firedrake