Installing MySQL-python

Question

I got the below failure while trying to get MySQL-python installed on my Ubuntu/Linux Box.From the below it seem like the issue is sh: mysql_config: not found Could someone advice me on what to do?

rmicro@ubuntu:~$ pip install MySQL-python
Downloading/unpacking MySQL-python
  Downloading MySQL-python-1.2.3.tar.gz (70Kb): 70Kb downloaded
  Running setup.py egg_info for package MySQL-python
    sh: mysql_config: not found
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 14, in <module>
      File "/home/rmicro/build/MySQL-python/setup.py", line 15, in <module>
        metadata, options = get_config()
      File "setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
        libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
      File "setup_posix.py", line 24, in mysql_config
        raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
    EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    sh: mysql_config: not found

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 14, in <module>
  File "/home/rmicro/build/MySQL-python/setup.py", line 15, in <module>
    metadata, options = get_config()
  File "setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
    libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
  File "setup_posix.py", line 24, in mysql_config
    raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

----------------------------------------
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1

Answer 1

On Ubuntu it is advised to use the distributions repository. So installing python-mysqldb should be straight forward:

sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb

If you actually want to use pip to install, which is as mentioned before not the suggested path but possible, please have a look at this previously asked question and answer: pip install mysql-python fails with EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

Here is a very comprehensive guide by the developer: http://mysql-python.blogspot.no/2012/11/is-mysqldb-hard-to-install.html

To get all the prerequisites for python-mysqld to install it using pip (which you will want to do if you are using virtualenv), run this:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev libmysqlclient-dev