cannot write to FASTA lockfile

Hello,

I am trying to use the Ensembl VEP tool to annotate a database after liftover.

For ease of use (or so I thought) I followed all the necessary steps decribed in the official documentation. I want to use local cache files, which I downloaded and a specified fasta file for reference. However, every time I try to to run one of the basic example commands:

./vep --cache --dir_cache /path/ --fasta /path/file -o stdout

I get the following error:

MSG: ERROR: Could not write to FASTA lock file /path/file.vep.lock

This file does not exist. What am I doing wrong?