Problem with installing ‘MySQLdb’ in Python

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Problem with installing ‘MySQLdb’ in Python

March 21, 2009 by oligoli

As a novice in the world of Python, I was searching for a way to connect to mysql db using python. And found the cool example from devshed that shows connectivity using MySqLdb module. Default installation of Python may not contain MySQLdb Module, in that case you have to install it manually.

First check whether its already installed ot not:

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Feb 1 2000, 16:32:16) [GCC egcs-2.91.66
19990314/Linux
(egcs- on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import MySQLdb
Traceback (innermost last):
File “”, line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named MySQLdb
>>>

ImportError: No module named MySQLdb >> indicate that you dont have MySQLdb installed.

According to devshed it just 4 line matter to install MySQLdb as follows:

$ tar -xzvf MySQL-python-0.9.2.tar.gz
$ cd MySQL-python-0.9.2
$ python setup.py build
$ python setup.py install

I was trying to build it in My dedicated server running on CentOS.

Every time I am trying to run
>> python setup.py build
it end up with following error.

error: command ‘gcc’ failed with exit status 1

After some googling, some forum suggest to check whether gcc is installed or not,
Thats the problem, everyone was worried about only GCC, I installed it again and recheck, still the same
problem.

After spending some ‘faltoo’ time I found that the following things sould be installed within your system
to run MySQLdb properly

>> yum install python-devel
>> yum install MySQL-devel
>> yum install zlib-devel
>> yum install openssl-devel

Now its working fine

Python 1.5.2 (#1, Feb 1 2000, 16:32:16) [GCC egcs-2.91.66
19990314/Linux
(egcs- on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import MySQLdb
>>>
(Gives no error)

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Posted in MySQL, Open Source, Python | Tagged MySQL, Python | 11 Comments

11 Responses

on August 18, 2009 at 3:54 AM Henry

Hi, thanks for your post, you saved my day after 1.5 hour research and messing around trying to install MySQL-python.
on August 18, 2009 at 3:57 PM oligoli

welcome Henry
on October 26, 2009 at 12:39 PM Rabur

Thx very much. It was very helpful
on January 27, 2010 at 3:31 PM Nikhil

I have installed MySQLdb, but now I want to use the connect() function. I am not sure about the by default username and pass.
Any help will be highly appreciated.
on March 3, 2010 at 10:56 PM Sanjeev

Thanks a lot. This post saved my day, I was about to give up installing the driver.
on September 22, 2010 at 4:27 PM Khuram Malik

Thanks for this.
You saved me at least half a day’s worth of work.
Im trying to use a specific python script with the Asterisk PBX and i found that i was lacking mySQLdb support, so glad i got it working with this.
on September 22, 2010 at 4:36 PM oligoli

Welcome Khuram.
on April 2, 2011 at 7:27 AM Non-techie Guide to setting up Django, Apache, MySQL on Amazon EC2 | pragmaticstartup

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on November 23, 2011 at 8:55 AM Noah G

fantastic, this did the trick. Thanks!
on February 23, 2012 at 5:50 PM Segun Famisa

Thanks alot…you saved me a lot of stress…but does anyone know what really is wrong with installing python setup.py install? I’ll really love to know.
Thanks once again
on February 28, 2012 at 8:53 AM felix001

Thank you, this saved me a bunch of time, just wish I had found it 3 days ago )

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