Unable to import a module that is definitely installed

Question

After installing mechanize, I don't seem to be able to import it.

I have tried installing from pip, easy_install, and via python setup.py install from this repo: https://github.com/abielr/mechanize. All of this to no avail, as each time I enter my Python interactive I get:

Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug  1 2012, 05:14:39) 
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import mechanize
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named mechanize
>>> 

The installations I ran previously reported that they had completed successfully, so I expect the import to work. What could be causing this error?

Tessellation

Are you sure it wasn't installed to 2.6 (which is default on ubuntu? (at least it's on my debian) – Defant

well, the output from easy install shows it's installed to 2.7: Installed /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mechanize-0.2.6.dev_20130112-py2.7.egg – Tessellation

I've just tried this every which way -- setup.py, easy_install, pip -- from pypi and the repo, but I can't get it to fail. Could you check sys.path to see if you're looking in the right places, ls -laR /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mech*to check for permissions trouble, and look at imp.find_module("mechanize") to distinguish between can't-find-it and can't-survive-importing-it errors? – Cholent

@Cholent added this info to original post – Tessellation

@RoybertSoylend: thanks. Unfortunately that rules out both of the two theories I was considering. :-/ – Cholent

See discussion at #32680581 – Moule

did you try installing it with conda? – Glenine

For me pip install my_package was consistently failing; could see it there with pip list, but would not import into my python 3 program. Fixed it simply by uninstalling then pip3 install my_package – Zosi

Related: Installing a pip package from within a Jupyter Notebook not working [ipython] [anaconda] + [conda] – Barcarole

Answer 1

In my case, it is permission problem. The package was somehow installed with root rw permission only, other user just cannot rw to it!

Alesiaalessandra

This happened to me, just running sudo pip install .... Simple fix: sudo chmod -R ugo+rX /lib/python2.7/site-packages/ – Suint

I have run into this many times and I think I just discovered the reason: umask is passed through sudo, so if your personal umask is tight and you use sudo for the install, the files and directories will be over-restricted. If you simply su first and then do the install from a full root shell, the resulting install is usable (at least it is for me). This was for pip, but may apply to apt-get as well. If others confirm this cause, may want to amend the answer accordingly? – Matherly

Adding to jozxyqk comment's: make sure you got the right directory by doing $ pip show <package_name> – Deplore

Same for me. I am working with Python 3.6 on Mac, so sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages did the trick – Arthrospore

sudo 777 is always very bad idea – Unless

Ah you're a genius! I installed without sudo but then when I ran my program I used sudo. So obvious now lol – Jessabell

I had this issue as well, it's caused by a bad umask. You can fix the umask for the entire machine if you want. In my case since I was doing the install via ansible I added a umask argument to the ansible task. – Buckie

Answer 2

I had the same problem: script with import colorama was throwing an ImportError, but sudo pip install colorama was telling me "package already installed".

My fix: run pip without sudo: pip install colorama. Then pip agreed it needed to be installed, installed it, and my script ran. Or even better, use python -m pip install <package>. The benefit of this is, since you are executing the specific version of python that you want the package in, pip will unequivocally install the package into the "right" python. Again, don't use sudo in this case... then you get the package in the right place, but possibly with (unwanted) root permissions.

My environment is Ubuntu 14.04 32-bit; I think I saw this before and after I activated my virtualenv.

Moule

alternatively you can use sudo's -H flag – Godding

Thanks, python -m pip install <package> show my problem. – Estell

The reason it changed without sudo is because of activating your virtualenv. That changes which executable named pip is used, to the one that will install packages to the Python in the virtualenv. Without the virtualenv activated, pip will find a version of Pip that installs to the Python that came with your operating system - which is dangerous, and exactly why you need sudo. You should effectively never do this. Many distributions of Linux deliberately remove Pip from the system Python. – Cosmos

Somehow pip and python pointed to separate distro or versions. Thanks! – Morena

Answer 3

It's the python path problem.

In my case, I have python installed in:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/bin/python,

and there is no site-packages directory within the python2.6.

The package(SOAPpy) I installed by pip is located

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/

And site-package is not in the python path, all I did is add site-packages to PYTHONPATH permanently.

1. Open up Terminal

2. Type open .bash_profile

3. In the text file that pops up, add this line at the end:

   export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/
   

4. Save the file, restart the Terminal, and you're done

Saga

This worked for me in getting Jenkins working with selenium python. – Martainn

This worked for me in running celery through supervisor, when my bash script called my celery script; celery script couldn't import the already installed modules inside my pip. Thanks a ton. – Robb

Note: another possibility of the import error is that you have multiple versions of Python installed in your computer. For example, one from the system's Python and one from Miniconda or Anaconda. Therefore, be sure always to use the correct corresponding "pip". – Pediatrics

Answer 4

I was able to correct this issue with a combined approach. First, I followed Chris' advice, opened a command line and typed 'pip show packagename' This provided the location of the installed package.

Next, I opened python and typed 'import sys', then 'sys.path' to show where my python searches for any packages I import. Alas, the location shown in the first step was NOT in the list.

Final step, I typed 'sys.path.append('package_location_seen_in_step_1'). You optionally can repeat step two to see the location is now in the list.

Test step, try to import the package again... it works.

The downside? It is temporary, and you need to add it to the list each time.

Midian

Answer 5

The Python import mechanism works, really, so, either:

1. Your PYTHONPATH is wrong,
2. Your library is not installed where you think it is
3. You have another library with the same name masking this one

Rosen

It can't be option 3 in this case; that would not throw an ImportError. – Orebro

maybe 2? I just don't know why it would install in the wrong place for this one library, where most others are fine. – Tessellation

Option 4: Your PYTHONPATH is right, your library is where you want it, you don't have a library masking this... but because you used sudo pip install it got installed with root privs, and at import time something is bombing for the lack of read or write access. – Moule

Not quite true, @MartijnPieters: if there was an import of the form "from <package> import <foo>", and if the obstructing package had no "foo", then you'd get an import error for option 3. – Moule

@DanH sure, but that's not the form the OP is using. – Orebro

Option 3 is totally valid! – Serilda

For "Option 3", please see What can I do about "ImportError: Cannot import name X" or "AttributeError: ... (most likely due to a circular import)"?. – Cosmos

And this is it! This is the answer. I previously installed a package that had a name identical to the new module I was trying to install. After reading this, I went to the folder where my python (pip) packages are installed and I manually deleted all the packages with the name. Then I did "pip install <PyDictionary>" again and that is solved. – Cartercarteret

Answer 6

I have been banging my head against my monitor on this until a young-hip intern told me the secret is to "python setup.py install" inside the module directory.

For some reason, running the setup from there makes it just work.

To be clear, if your module's name is "foo":

[burnc7 (2016-06-21 15:28:49) git]# ls -l
total 1
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root  118 Jun 21 15:22 foo
[burnc7 (2016-06-21 15:28:51) git]# cd foo
[burnc7 (2016-06-21 15:28:53) foo]# ls -l
total 2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   93 Jun 21 15:23 foo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  416 May 31 12:26 setup.py
[burnc7 (2016-06-21 15:28:54) foo]# python setup.py install
<--snip-->

If you try to run setup.py from any other directory by calling out its path, you end up with a borked install.

DOES NOT WORK:

python /root/foo/setup.py install

DOES WORK:

cd /root/foo
python setup.py install

Vinegarish

This will depend on what the setup.py script actually does - it's Python code, after all. If the directory matters, it's because the code in the script is expecting a specific CWD - for example, because it's trying to open or move files using relative paths. Aside from that, though, this is only relevant for installing from source that you already have downloaded (or checked out from a repository), and only for setup.py based installs. It is not relevant for newer pyproject.toml-based installs, and not relevant for installing with pip from PyPI. – Cosmos

Nowadays, setup.py should not be run directly at all - it should only be invoked via setuptools. This is part of the long-term migration of the Python package-installation paradigm. – Cosmos

Answer 7

I encountered this while trying to use keyring which I installed via sudo pip install keyring. As mentioned in the other answers, it's a permissions issue in my case.

What worked for me:

1. Uninstalled keyring:

• sudo pip uninstall keyring

2. I used sudo's -H option and reinstalled keyring:

• sudo -H pip install keyring

Antipodes

Answer 8

In PyCharm, I fixed this issue by changing the project interpreter path.

File -> Settings -> Project -> Project Interpreter

File -> Invalidate Caches… may be required afterwards.

Pointless

Or here's a shortcut way, if you are using PyCharm: Just File -> Settings -> Project -> Project Interpreter -> Available Packages and search for your desired package here and simply click install. – Escamilla

Answer 9

Check that you are using the same python version in the interpreter of your IDE or code editor and on your system. For example, check your python version in the terminal with python3 --version And check python version for interpreter in VSCode by cmd+shift+p-> Python: Select interpreter -> select the same version as you see in your terminal.

Umlaut

Answer 10

I couldn't get my PYTHONPATH to work properly. I realized adding export fixed the issue:

(did work)

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:~/test/site-packages

vs.

(did not work)

PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:~/test/site-packages

Camarena

Answer 11

This problem can also occur with a relocated virtual environment (venv).

I had a project with a venv set up inside the root directory. Later I created a new user and decided to move the project to this user. Instead of moving only the source files and installing the dependencies freshly, I moved the entire project along with the venv folder to the new user.

After that, the dependencies that I installed were getting added to the global site-packages folder instead of the one inside the venv, so the code running inside this env was not able to access those dependencies.

To solve this problem, just remove the venv folder and recreate it again, like so:

$ deactivate
$ rm -rf venv
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Unknot

"After that the dependencies that I installed were getting added to the global site-packages instead of the one inside venv folder." This happens because the venv is not active. However, it is true that venvs are not designed to be relocatable. The code here suggests that you are on a Linux system. It should not be possible to add anything to the "global" site-packages without using sudo. (Do not do that.) – Cosmos

Answer 12

Something that worked for me was:

python -m pip install -user {package name}

The command does not require sudo. This was tested on OSX Mojave.

Replicate

Answer 13

In my case I had run pip install Django==1.11 and it would not import from the python interpreter.

Browsing through pip's commands I found pip show which looked like this:

> pip show Django
Name: Django
Version: 1.11
...
Location: /usr/lib/python3.4/site-packages
...

Notice the location says '3.4'. I found that the python-command was linked to python2.7

/usr/bin> ls -l python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 14 15:48 python -> python2.7

Right next to that I found a link called python3 so I used that. You could also change the link to python3.4. That would fix it, too.

Forde

Answer 14

In my case it was a problem with a missing __init__.py file in the module, that I wanted to import in a Python 2.7 environment.

Python 3.3+ has Implicit Namespace Packages that allow it to create a packages without an __init__.py file.

Bantamweight

Answer 15

Had this problem too. The package was installed on Python 3.8.0 but VS Code was running my script using an older version (3.4)

fix in terminal:

py <yourfile>.py

Make sure you're installing the package on the right Python version.

Stripper

Answer 16

I had colorama installed via pip and I was getting "ImportError: No module named colorama"

So I searched with "find", found the absolute path and added it in the script like this:

import sys
sys.path.append("/usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/")
import colorama 

And it worked.

Erective

Answer 17

I had just the same problem, and updating setuptools helped:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

After that, reinstall the package, and it should work fine :)

The thing is, the package is built incorrectly if setuptools is old.

Sabba

Answer 18

I had similar problem (on Windows) and the root cause in my case was ANTIVIRUS software! It has "Auto-Containment" feature, that wraps running process with some kind of a virtual machine. Symptoms are: pip install somemodule works fine in one cmd-line window and import somemodule fails when executed from another process with the error

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'somemodule'

Glisten

Answer 19

If the other answers mentioned do not work for you, try deleting your pip cache and reinstalling the package. My machine runs Ubuntu14.04 and it was located under ~/.cache/pip. Deleting this folder did the trick for me.

Halmahera

Answer 20

Also, make sure that you do not confuse pip3 with pip. What I found was that package installed with pip was not working with python3 and vice-versa.

Criticize

Answer 21

In my case (an Ubuntu 20.04 VM on WIN10 Host), I have a disordered situation with many version of Python installed and variuos point of Shared Library (installed with pip in many points of the File System). I'm referring to 3.8.10 Python version. After many tests, I've found a suggestion searching with google (but' I'm sorry, I haven't the link). This is what I've done to resolve the problem :

1. From shell session on Ubuntu 20.04 VM, (inside the Home, in my case /home/hduser), I've started a Jupyter Notebook session with the command "jupyter notebook".

2. Then, when jupyter was running I've opened a .ipynb file to give commands.

3. First : pip list --> give me the list of packages installed, and, sympy wasn't present (although I had installed it with "sudo pip install sympy" command.

4. Last with the command !pip3 install sympy (inside jupyter notebook session) I've solved the problem, here the screen-shot :

5. Now, with !pip list the package "sympy" is present, and working :

Snuffer

Answer 22

In my case, I assumed a package was installed because it showed up in the output of pip freeze. However, just the site-packages/*.dist-info folder is enough for pip to list it as installed despite missing the actual package contents (perhaps from an accidental deletion). This happens even when all the path settings are correct, and if you try pip install <pkg> it will say "requirement already satisfied".

The solution is to manually remove the dist-info folder so that pip realizes the package contents are missing. Then, doing a fresh install should re-populate anything that was accidentally removed

Polley

Answer 23

Not sure if this will help anyone, but I had a similar issue on Mac M1 with zsh. Turns out I had set an alias command in my .zshrc file with the same name as my python command (python3).

To solve the issue, I just had to unalias the command. I ran:

unalias python3

both from my home terminal and from the terminal in Visual Studio.

Corell

Answer 24

When you install via easy_install or pip, is it completing successfully? What is the full output? Which python installation are you using? You may need to use sudo before your installation command, if you are installing modules to a system directory (if you are using the system python installation, perhaps). There's not a lot of useful information in your question to go off of, but some tools that will probably help include:

• echo $PYTHONPATH and/or echo $PATH: when importing modules, Python searches one of these environment variables (lists of directories, : delimited) for the module you want. Importing problems are often due to the right directory being absent from these lists

• which python, which pip, or which easy_install: these will tell you the location of each executable. It may help to know.

• Use virtualenv, like @JesseBriggs suggests. It works very well with pip to help you isolate and manage the modules and environment for separate Python projects.

Roughhew

Answer 25

I had this exact problem, but none of the answers above worked. It drove me crazy until I noticed that sys.path was different after I had imported from the parent project. It turned out that I had used importlib to write a little function in order to import a file not in the project hierarchy. Bad idea: I forgot that I had done this. Even worse, the import process mucked with the sys.path--and left it that way. Very bad idea.

The solution was to stop that, and simply put the file I needed to import into the project. Another approach would have been to put the file into its own project, as it needs to be rebuilt from time to time, and the rebuild may or may not coincide with the rebuild of the main project.

Predesignate

Answer 26

I had this problem with 2.7 and 3.5 installed on my system trying to test a telegram bot with Python-Telegram-Bot.

I couldn't get it to work after installing with pip and pip3, with sudo or without. I always got:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "telegram.py", line 2, in <module>
    from telegram.ext import Updater
  File "$USER/telegram.py", line 2, in <module>
    from telegram.ext import Updater
ImportError: No module named 'telegram.ext'; 'telegram' is not a package

Reading the error message correctly tells me that python is looking in the current directory for a telegram.py. And right, I had a script lying there called telegram.py and this was loaded by python when I called import.

Conclusion, make sure you don't have any package.py in your current working dir when trying to import. (And read error message thoroughly).

Conciliar

Answer 27

I had a similar problem using Django. In my case, I could import the module from the Django shell, but not from a .py which imported the module.
The problem was that I was running the Django server (therefore, executing the .py) from a different virtualenv from which the module had been installed.

Instead, the shell instance was being run in the correct virtualenv. Hence, why it worked.

Lapoint

Answer 28

This Works!!!

This often happens when module is installed to an older version of python or another directory, no worries as solution is simple. - import module from directory in which module is installed. You can do this by first importing the python sys module then importing from the path in which the module is installed

import sys
sys.path.append("directory in which module is installed")

import <module_name>

Defiance

Answer 29

Most of the possible cases have been already covered in solutions, just sharing my case, it happened to me that I installed a package in one environment (e.g. X) and I was importing the package in another environment (e.g. Y). So, always make sure that you're importing the package from the environment in which you installed the package.

Banter

Answer 30

For me it was ensuring the version of the module aligned with the version of Python I was using.. I built the image on a box with Python 3.6 and then injected into a Docker image that happened to have 3.7 installed, and then banging my head when Python was telling me the module wasn't installed...

36m for Python 3.6 bsonnumpy.cpython-36m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so

37m for Python 3.7 bsonnumpy.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so

Bigener

pip install the version that matches the version of Python you are using. What error do you get, and what is the output of python --version – Bigener

python --version gives me : Python 3.7.7 and when I chek where the package are installed with pip show librosa gives ; Location: /home/ec2-user/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages how means that the package are in the right place, but when I import the package gives : no module name I am working on the AWS Sagemaker env Pytorch_p36 – Slover

presumably you want to be using pytorch_p37 ? – Bigener

there's no pytorch_p37 – Slover

Answer 31

I know this is a super old post but for me, I had an issue with a 32 bit python and 64 bit python installed. Once I uninstalled the 32 bit python, everything worked as it should.

Derbent

Answer 32

I have solved my issue that same libraries were working fine in one project(A) but importing those same libraries in another project(B) caused error. I am using Pycharm as IDE at Windows OS. So, after trying many potential solutions and failing to solve the issue, I did these two things (deleted "Venv" folder, and reconfigured interpreter):

1-In project(B), there was a folder named("venv"), located in External Libraries/. I deleted that folder.

2-Step 1 (deleting "venv" folder) causes error in Python Interpreter Configuration, and there is a message shown at top of screen saying "Invalid python interpreter selected for the project" and "configure python interpreter", select that link and it opens a new window. There in "Project Interpreter" drop-down list, there is a Red colored line showing previous invalid interpreter. Now, Open this list and select the Python Interpreter(in my case, it is Python 3.7). Press "Apply" and "OK" at the bottom and you are good to go.

Note: It was potentially the issue where Virtual Environment of my Project(B) was not recognizing the already installed and working libraries.

Widen

Answer 33

As a friend did for me today, here is what helped me (I am using Windows):

Press 'Setting' -> 'Project' -> 'Project Interpreter'. Here in the window on the right, there is a line with the title 'Project Interpreter' on it's left. Click this line and it will open several additional lines.

Now press the 'Show All' line. A window will open. In this window press the small '+' sign in the upper right corner.

A new window will open. On the left there are 4 tabs, press the most upper one, which says 'Virtualenv Environment'. Now, in the window on the right, mark the 'Existing Environment' option. The 'Interpreter' line will become well visible. Press the '...' button on the right of the line.

Now, a browsing window will open. Browse to the directory that you installed Python itself in. Not the one with PyCharm. When you get there, choose the 'python.exe' file and press OK (the window will disappear).

Press OK again (this window will disappear too).

Now in this window make sure the new line you created is marked, and press OK again.

Now, all the installed packages should be visible in the project interpreter, and are read by your program.

Bucky

Answer 34

I know, that this is very old post but I didn't find any answer that was useful in my case (I am using arch linux). I had a similar problem installing "nest_asyncio" package which was definitely installed (visible when listing all the installed packages). There is a right way for arch linux users of installing python packages (as it was already explained here by Emanuel Fontelles). In my case the solution was just to uninstall the remaining not-working package (in my case "nest_asyncio") and then installing it again using the following command:

sudo pacman -S python-"nest_asyncio

That solved all the problems.

Ibbetson

Answer 35

Today, I found that package setup.py would produce this problem too.

I have a setup with classifiers < 3

setup(
    name='data_reader',
    version='0.1',

    description='data_reader by Mithril ',
    long_description=long_description,

    author='Mithril',

    classifiers=[
        'Development Status :: 1 - Beta',
        'Programming Language :: Python :: 2',
        'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.6',
        'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7',

        'Intended Audience :: Developers',
        'Operating System :: OS Independent',

        "License :: GPLv3",

        'Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP',
        'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Tools',
        'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules',
    ],


)

And I was using python 3.7 in a conda env, I found

pip install .
# or
pip install git+https://github.com/eromoe/data_reader

All successed, however import data_reader raise not found .

After some testing, dig that only after changing classifiers to

    classifiers=[
        'Development Status :: 1 - Beta',
        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
        'Intended Audience :: Developers',
        'Operating System :: OS Independent',
        "License :: GPLv3",
        'Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP',
        'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Tools',
        'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules',
    ],

Install again, the import became normal!

Waterless

Answer 36

I solved it by calling the following command on the terminal

eval "$(conda shell.bash hook)"

Lafave

Answer 37

Maybe a bit off-topic, but i had issues to import PyYAML. Points out that you need to import yaml. (guess it's a classical rtfm...)

Faction

Answer 38

In my case I had to also install the module(s) for the superuser, too.

sudo su
pip install <module>

Apparently the superuse cannot access the normal users files under certain circumstances.

Keek

don't use pip with sudo. – Aikoail

@Aikoail If I need to run a python script as sudo, installing the required modules as sudo is the easiest solution. – Keek

Answer 39

If you are using a virtual environment use pipenv install <module name> instead of pip install <module name>

Worked for me.

Naomanaomi

pipenv not found – Slover

pipenv is a separate package and way of doing things that doesn't have anything to do with the question asked. pypi.org/project/pipenv – Peplos

Answer 40

Simplest solution that worked for me that I don't see mentioned in this thread:

I have multiple versions of Python installed but was trying to use Python3.7 -- so I had to use:

sudo pip3.7 install <package>

Carvey

don't ever use pip with sudo. This makes your package manager sad. Maybe if you use pip, try the --user flag. – Aikoail

xotix, could you elaborate on why somebody should be concerned about the feelings of a package manager? if you're trying to say that you should follow the principle of least privilege and it's not necessary, then maybe you should say that. – Carvey