mysql_config not found when installing mysqldb python interface

Question

I am trying to get a Python script to run on the linux server I'm connected to via ssh. The script uses mysqldb. I have all the other components I need, but when I try to install mySQLdb via setuptools like so:,

python setup.py install

I get the following error report related to the mysql_config command.

sh: mysql_config: command not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 15, in <module>
    metadata, options = get_config()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/MySQL-python-1.2.3/setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
    libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/MySQL-python-1.2.3/setup_posix.py", line 24, in mysql_config
    raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

Has anyone else encountered this error and if so how did you resolve it/what can I do to successfully install mysqldb?

Heliotherapy

Hi @Heliotherapy - I've edited your question to hopefully make it a little more concise and get you some answers :) If you don't like it, or want to provide additional details, there's an edit link directly under your question which you can use to either roll back to your original, or add to the changes I've made. – Hypoxia

I ran into the exact same problem, because i installed mysql from source. if you do too, just run something like this to make mysql_config available: sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config /usr/bin/mysql_config or add /usr/local/mysql/bin/ to your path. – Artwork

If you have already installed mysql, the above comment by Thi Duong Nguyen solves the problem by creating a symlink to the mysql_config file in the /usr/bin directory, which is in the path that python will search. – Simonson

just do this-------------apt-get install python-mysqldb – Putout

@AlexBoschmans symlinking /usr/bin is wrong, it is usr/local/my... see Thi's answer. – Modeling

Mac users, read this: pypi.org/project/mysqlclient – Anastomose

Answer 1

mySQLdb is a python interface for mysql, but it is not mysql itself. And apparently mySQLdb needs the command 'mysql_config', so you need to install that first.

Can you confirm that you did or did not install mysql itself, by running "mysql" from the shell? That should give you a response other than "mysql: command not found".

Which linux distribution are you using? Mysql is pre-packaged for most linux distributions. For example, for debian / ubuntu, installing mysql is as easy as

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

mysql-config is in a different package, which can be installed from (again, assuming debian / ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

if you are using mariadb, the drop in replacement for mysql, then run

sudo apt-get install libmariadbclient-dev

Reference: https://github.com/JudgeGirl/Judge-sender/issues/4#issuecomment-186542797

Jos

Reading package lists...Done Building dependency tree Reading state information...Done Note, selecting libmysqlclient15-dev instead of libmysqlclient-dev Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libmysqlclient15-dev: Depends: zlib1g-dev but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages – Heliotherapy

The above is an error I got when running the "sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev" command. The error was too long to allow me to put a statement explanning what I was talking about (and so I am doing that here instead). The key of that error seems to be this part: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libmysqlclient15-dev: Depends: zlib1g-dev but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages But I ran this command: sudo apt-cache pkgnames > packages and then checked the packages file and I found the zlib1g-dev package in that list as well as libmysqlclient15-dev – Heliotherapy

mysql is installed - but I need mySQLdb, because that is what my script uses. – Heliotherapy

Should 'sudo apt-get install mysql' be 'sudo apt-get install mysql-server'? – Kaylakayle

Note that for Debian it's sudo apt-get install mysql-server and sudo apt-get install mysql-client – Gaudet

And for Fedora, it's sudo yum install mysql-server and sudo yum install mysql-devel. – Tour

Can we finally admit that 'pip' is a colossal failure? Errors like this are such a pain, and they seem to happen with the majority of packages. Python badly needs a new solution to package management. – And

For me on Debian it was libmysqlclient-dev. In fact I have installed both libmariadbclient-dev libmysqlclient-dev – Charmion

Solved my problem on Debian 10 with python 3.7.3 – Phoenicia

This comment is a copy of a github thread. Please consider adding the reference – Commiserate

You really don't need mysql-server itself, just client-dev. – Bretbretagne

And for fedora using dnf, use dnf install -y community-mysql-devel. Use dnf provides mysql_config to find out which packages have this file generally. – Subdual

Worked for me, and then I got an error about missing Python.h, which I solved installing python3-dev – Colorable

For ubunut/debian if not need mysql server just install the libmariadbclient-dev – Guardafui

For centos 7, it's actually is "yum install mariadb-devel" – Sayre

Answer 2

I was installing python-mysql on Ubuntu 12.04 using

pip install mysql-python

First I had the same problem:

Not Found "mysql_config"

This worked for me

$ sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

Then I had this problem:

...
_mysql.c:29:20: error fatal: Python.h: No existe el archivo o el directorio

compilación terminada.

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

Then I tried with

apt-get install python-dev

(If you're using python3, install python3-dev instead.)

And then I was happy :)

pip install mysql-python
    Installing collected packages: mysql-python
      Running setup.py install for mysql-python
        building '_mysql' extension
        gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -Dversion_info=(1,2,4,'beta',4) -D__version__=1.2.4b4 -I/usr/include/mysql -I/usr/include/python2.7 -c _mysql.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/_mysql.o -DBIG_JOINS=1 -fno-strict-aliasing -g
        In file included from _mysql.c:44:0:
        /usr/include/mysql/my_config.h:422:0: aviso: se redefinió "HAVE_WCSCOLL" [activado por defecto]
        /usr/include/python2.7/pyconfig.h:890:0: nota: esta es la ubicación de la definición previa
        gcc -pthread -shared -Wl,-O1 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/_mysql.o -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -lmysqlclient_r -lpthread -lz -lm -lrt -ldl -o build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/_mysql.so
    
Successfully installed mysql-python
Cleaning up...

Ambriz

Works too on openSUSE, where "libmysqlclient-dev" becomes "libmysqlclient-devel". Now the pip package installs fine. Thanks. – Spinelli

installing python dev headers solved the missing Python.h error. Thanks. – Superpose

if use python3.x, tried with apt-get install python3-dev. – Blameworthy

This didn't work for me on 14.04 - "E: Package 'python-dev' has no installation candidate" – Bendite

This is a good answer, but it is outdated and should be updated. In newer versions of Debian-based Linux apt command will be: sudo apt-get install default-libmysqlclient-dev python3-dev – Nine

Answer 3

(Specific to Mac OS X)

I have tried a lot of things, but these set of commands finally worked for me.

1. Install mysql

   brew install mysql
   

2. brew unlink mysql
3. brew install mysql-connector-c
4. Add the mysql bin folder to PATH

   export PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/8.0.11/bin:$PATH
   

5. mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/lib/
6. Create a symlink

   sudo ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/8.0.11/lib/libmysqlclient.21.dylib /usr/local/Cellar/lib/libmysqlclient.21.dylib
   

7. brew reinstall openssl (source)
8. Finally, install mysql-client

   LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/ pip install mysqlclient
   

Update: In case this doesn't work, @vinyll suggests to run brew link mysql before step 8.

Emlin

For Step 4, use brew info mysql to get the actual/correct path to the mysql installation. Then to make the PATH change persist, do the export PATH.. in your ~/.bash_profile. – Transcurrent

step 1-4 with brew link --overwrite mysql-connector-c works on my Mac – Heise

Finally, it works on my Catalina. Use specify open ssl is very important. – Altair

You should not need sudo to work in /usr/local/Cellar. ln -s /usr/local/Cellar… should be enough. – Longshore

I had to do a brew link mysql before step 8 to get it running. – Longshore

@Longshore it might be the case. The answer was written for High Sierra. I no longer am using a mac OS. I'll still add to the updates of the answer, may be it can help someone else. – Emlin

if you follows this not work, you might check version of your mysql-connector-c, and change version number in step four to your version. – Aeromarine

Ran only the step 8 after installing brew install mysql – Shelbyshelden

I added these to my .bashrc: export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/include" export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/lib", and only ran brew install mysql, and it worked. Also fixes all future executions of pip to make sure they use the right ssl libs. – Undesirable

it was enough for me to just do brew install mysql – Brahmanism

Answer 4

On Red Hat I had to do

sudo yum install mysql-devel gcc gcc-devel python-devel
sudo easy_install mysql-python

Then it worked.

Universal

Worked for me on CentOS 7: yum install MySQL-python – Virelay

If you need to install MySQL-python as a Python package, or are using virtualenv, this might help: yum install mysql-devel; venv/bin/pip install MySQL-python. – Virelay

If you use MariaDB on CentOS 7, run sudo yum install mariadb-devel first, then you can install mysqlclient by pip install mysqlclient – Clomp

where did you get gcc-devel rpm from? – Avifauna

yum install mysql-devel Centos 8 – Monoceros

Answer 5

On python 3.5.2 + any future version

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev

Sirdar

Also the mariadb package worked like a charm : libmariadb-dev. – Geopolitics

Perhaps note that apt-get is specific to Debian and derived Linux distros like Ubuntu, Mint, etc. This seems to duplicate earlier answers with more details and background. – Foodstuff

Answer 6

The below worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:

apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev

All though it worked, i still went ahead to do the below:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin/

Nectareous

Answer 7

I got the same error while trying to install mysql-python.

This is how I fixed it.

sudo PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin/:$PATH pip install mysql-python

The problem was that the installer could not find the mysql_config in the default path. Now it can ..and it worked..

 15 warnings generated.
    clang -bundle -undefined dynamic_lookup -Wl,-F. build/temp.macosx-10.8-intel-2.7/_mysql.o -L/usr/local/mysql/lib -lmysqlclient_r -lz -lm -lmygcc -o build/lib.macosx-10.8-intel-2.7/_mysql.so -arch x86_64

Successfully installed mysql-python
Cleaning up...

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

Chattel

I was having the same issue installing MySQL locally on a Mac running OSX 10.9.4 (Mavericks). This solution worked for me as well. – Schrick

Answer 8

I fixed this problem with the following steps:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo python setup.py install

Gibbous

When running >= Debian Stretch make sure to install default-libmysqlclient-dev, since the regular libmysqlclient-dev package has no installation candidate. – Dyanna

Answer 9

The commands (mysql too) mPATH might be missing.

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin/

Refugia

Answer 10

Step1:-Install Python3 & Python3-dev Both

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-dev

Step2:- Install Python & Mysql Connector

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

step3:- Install python mysql client

sudo apt-get install mysqlclient

This will Solve your Problem

Sapid

Step 2 fixed this for me. – Leban

This has fixed my issue which had bugged me for 3 hours.. Thank you so much!!! – Glee

Answer 11

The package libmysqlclient-dev is deprecated, so use the below command to fix it.

Package libmysqlclient-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source

sudo apt-get install default-libmysqlclient-dev

Inexecution

Answer 12

I think the most convenient way to solve this problem in 2020 is using another python package. We don't need install any other binary software.

Try this

pip install mysql-connector-python

and then

import mysql.connector

mydb = mysql.connector.connect(
          host="",
          user="",
          passwd="",
          database=""
          )      
cursor = mydb.cursor( buffered=True)
cursor.execute('show tables;')
cursor.execute('insert into test values (null, "a",10)')
mydb.commit()
mydb.disconnect()

Patron

More information here: dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-python/en/… and here dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/python – Therefore

Answer 13

If you're on macOS and already installed [email protected] via brew install:

1. brew install mysql-connector-c
2. brew unlink [email protected]
3. brew link --overwrite --dry-run [email protected] first, to see what symlinks are getting overwritten
4. brew link --overwrite --force [email protected] to actually overwrite mysql-related symlinks with [email protected]
5. pip install mysqlclient

Hanes

Answer 14

I fixed it by installing libmysqlclient:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient16-dev

Voluntarism

Answer 15

In centos 7 this works for me :

yum install mariadb-devel
pip install mysqlclient

Outgo

works on rhel8.9 – Sediment

Answer 16

The MySQL-python package is using the mysql_config command to learn about the mysql configuration on your host. Your host does not have the mysql_config command.

The MySQL development libraries package (MySQL-devel-xxx) from dev.mysql.com provides this command and the libraries needed by the MySQL-python package. The MySQL-devel packages are found in the download - community server area. The MySQL development library package names start with MySQL-devel and vary based MySQL version and linux platform (e.g. MySQL-devel-5.5.24-1.linux2.6.x86_64.rpm.)

Note that you do not need to install mysql server.

Rizzi

Answer 17

For Alpine Linux:

$ apk add mariadb-dev mariadb-client mariadb-libs

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL and became the new standard as of Alpine 3.2. See https://bugs.alpinelinux.org/issues/4264

Upanddown

which makes my alpine image almost 500MiB, I came to alpine for a smaller image size – Dao

I also have to install python3-dev for the lib to build – Dao

Answer 18

On my Fedora 23 machine I had to run the following:

sudo dnf install mysql-devel

Ambassador

Answer 19

In CentOS 7 , the following things should be done:

#step1:install mysql 
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-yum-repo-quick-guide/en/

#step2:
sudo yum install mysql-devel

or

sudo yum install mysql-community-devel

Orgiastic

Answer 20

also, i fetch the same problem I fixed this problem with the following steps: First I run this command

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

then I install

pip install mysqlclient==2.1.0

this is worked for me

Walter

Please don’t post images of code, error messages, or other textual data. – Foodstuff

Answer 21

I think, following lines can be executed on terminal

 sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/bin/mysql_config /usr/sbin/

This mysql_config directory is for zend server on MacOSx. You can do it for linux like following lines

sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config /usr/sbin/

This is default linux mysql directory.

Stagnant

Answer 22

I had this issues and solved if by adding a symlink to mysql_config.

I had installed mysql with homebrew and saw this in the output.

Error: The `brew link` step did not complete successfully

Depending on how you got mysql it will be in different places. In my case /usr/local/Cellar/mysql
Once you know where it is you should be able to ma a symbolic link to where python is looking for it. /usr/local/mysql

This worked for me.

ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/<< VERSION >>/bin/mysql_config   /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

Salimeter

Answer 23

I had the same problem. I solved it by following this tutorial to install Python with python3-dev on Ubuntu 16.04:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev

And now you can set up your virtual environment:

sudo apt-get install -y python3-venv
pyvenv my_env
source my_env/bin/activate

Bergh

Answer 24

You need to install the python-dev package:

sudo apt-get install python-dev

Perusse

Answer 25

sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb

Python 2.5? Sounds like you are using a very old version of Ubuntu Server (Hardy 8.04?) - please confirm which Linux version the server uses.

python-mysql search on ubuntu package database

Some additional info:

From the README of mysql-python -

Red Hat Linux .............

MySQL-python is pre-packaged in Red Hat Linux 7.x and newer. This includes Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can also build your own RPM packages as described above.

Debian GNU/Linux ................

Packaged as python-mysqldb_::

# apt-get install python-mysqldb

Or use Synaptic.

.. _python-mysqldb: http://packages.debian.org/python-mysqldb

Ubuntu ......

Same as with Debian.

Footnote: If you really are using a server distribution older than Ubuntu 10.04 then you are out of official support, and should upgrade sooner rather than later.

Nonsectarian

I can confirm for Debian 10 sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb – Merrel

This is all you need to do : dev.mysql.com/doc/connector-python/en/… – Malapert

Answer 26

This method is only for those who know that Mysql is installed but still mysql_config can't be find. This happens if python install can't find mysql_config in your system path, which mostly happens if you have done the installation via .dmg Mac Package or installed at some custom path. The easiest and documented way by MySqlDB is to change the site.cfg. Find the mysql_config which is probably in /usr/local/mysql/bin/ and change the variable namely mysql_config just like below and run the installation again. Don't forget to un-comment it by removing "#"

Change below line

"#mysql_config = /usr/local/bin/mysql_config"

to

"mysql_config = /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config"

depending upon the path in your system.

By the way I used python install after changing the site.cfg

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python setup.py install

Angadreme

Answer 27

So far, all solutions (Linux) require sudo or root rights to install . Here is a solution if you do not have root rights and without sudo. (no sudo apt install ...):

1. Download the .deb file of the libmysqlclient-dev, e.g. from this mirror
2. Navigate to the downloaded file and run dpkg -x libmysqlclient-dev_<version tag>.deb . This will extract a folder called usr.

3. Symlink ./usr/bin/mysql_config to somewhere that is found on your $PATH:

   ln -s `pwd` /usr/bin/mysql_config FOLDER_IN_YOUR_PATH

4. It should now be able to find mysql_config

Tested on Ubuntu 18.04.

Polash

Does this work in CentOS 7? Assuming I dont have root access or dpkg installed , how should I approach it ? – Pinkie

No need to be root as long as you are working in your own virtual environment – Petulah

Answer 28

For macOS Mojave , additional configuration was required, for compilers to find openssl you may need to set:

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"

Gracious

Answer 29

On MacOS (OS/X) Catalina, I found that I needed to do this:

 export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/:/usr/local/mysql-5.7.16-osx10.11-x86_64/bin/

On my computer, the mysql command is in /usr/local/bin (from the standard MacOS installer, not "brew").

Frangipane

Answer 30

I encountered the same problem, just added the path where *mysql_config* resided to the environment variable PATH and it worked for me.

Crampon

Answer 31

sudo apt-get build-dep python-mysqldb will install all the dependencies to build the package from PIP/easy_install

Endemic

Answer 32

As actual error is

gcc ... -I/usr/include/python2.7 ...

_mysql.c:29:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory

and If you can't install python-dev or python-devel packages, you may download archive with needed version of python sources from http://hg.python.org/ and place headers files in proper folder for include

Berl

Answer 33

Just type:

$ sudo apt-get install python-dev
$ venv/bin/pip install MySQL-python

This will solve this problems.

Temptress

If you get an error with mysql_config, istall this: sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev – Temptress

Answer 34

In CentOS 7 instead of yum install mysql-devel do yum install mysql-community-devel

This does not require you to add the mysql repo.

Schoenburg

No package mysql-community-devel available. – Vocable

Answer 35

Debian 11 install libmariadb-dev-compat to provide mysql_config binary for pip install mysqlclient

Despairing

Answer 36

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev sudo apt-get install python-dev sudo apt-get install MySQL-python

NOtice you should install python-dev as well, the packages like MySQL-python are compiled from source. The pythonx.x-dev packages contain the necessary header files for linking against python. Why does installing numpy require python-dev in Kubuntu 12.04

Dermot