How to install python-setuptools properly on Ubuntu 14.04

Question

ivan@MS-7640:~$ python -V
Python 2.7.10

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
[sudo] password for ivan: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
python-setuptools is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

but I get this error message :

Checking python module: setuptools ... 
 setuptools  is not installed, Please install it first.

On Debian/Ubntu: apt-get install python-setuptools
On CentOS/RHEL: yum install python-distribute


Error occured during setup. 
Please fix possible problems and run the script again.

How to fix it?

Solution

Run this command:

sudo pip install -U setuptools

This command install the required dependence.

Comments

[Javier Rivera]

What did you do to get that error?.

[Ivan]

i am trying install seafile, but get that error message. anyway how to know python-setuptools install properly?

[Javier Rivera]

Just type 'easy_install --help' in the console. But again how are you trying to install seafile, it looks like you are trying to compile it from source.

[Ivan]

yeah you right, anyway i upgrade python 2.7.6 (default) to 2.7.10 i do this upgrade compile it from source too, i think thats cause of this problem. what should i do? should i reinstall ubuntu?

[Javier Rivera]

If you compiled python from source then it's likely that you installed it with 'make install' to another place (unless you created a deb file and installed it). IF this did happen then you have 3 different python installs on your system (both python2.7 probably mixed). Apt-get will install libraries to the default one, so you will need to install setuptools to your 2.7.10 install, again by compiling from source. But yes chances are that you made a mess out of your system.