Mac OS X - EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

Question

First off, yeah, I've already seen this:

pip install mysql-python fails with EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

The problem

I am trying to use Django on a Google App Engine project. However, I haven't been able to get started as the server fails to start properly due to:

ImproperlyConfigured("Error loading MySQLdb module: %s" % e)
ImproperlyConfigured: Error loading MySQLdb module: No module named MySQLdb

I did some research and it all pointed to having to install Mysql-python, as apparently it isn't on my system. I actually tried uninstalling it and got this:

Cannot uninstall requirement mysql-python, not installed

Whenever I actually do try to install via:

sudo pip install MySQL-python

I get an error stating:

raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

I've already tried running:

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

but that didn't seem to help, as I ran the installation command again and it still failed.

Any ideas?

Please note I'm not in a virtualenv.

Solution 1

I had been debugging this problem forever - 3 hours 17 mins. What particularly annoyed me was that I already had sql installed on my system through prior uni work but pip/pip3 wasn't recognising it. These threads above and many other I scoured the internet for were helpful in eluminating the problem but didn't actually solve things.

ANSWER

Pip is looking for mysql binaries in the Homebrew Directory which is located relative to Macintosh HD @

/usr/local/Cellar/

so I found that this requires you making a few changes

step 1: Download MySql if not already done so https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

Step 2: Locate it relative to Macintosh HD and cd

/usr/local/mysql/bin

Step 3: Once there open terminal and use a text editor of choice - I'm a neovim guy myself so I typed (doesn't automatically come with Mac... another story for another day)

nvim mysql_config

Step 4: You will see at approx line 112

# Create options 
libs="-L$pkglibdir"
libs="$libs -l "

Change to

# Create options 
libs="-L$pkglibdir"
libs="$libs -lmysqlclient -lssl -lcrypto"

*you'll notice that this file has read-only access so if your using vim or neovim

:w !sudo tee %

Step 5: Head to the home directory and edit the .bash_profile file

cd ~

Then

nvim .bash_profile

and add

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

to the file then save

Step 6: relative to Macintosh HD locate paths and add to it

cd /private/etc/

then

nvim paths

and add

/usr/local/mysql/bin

*you'll again notice that this file has read-only access so if your using vim or neovim

:w !sudo tee % 

then

cd ~

then refresh the terminal with your changes by running

source .bash_profile

Finally

pip3 install mysqlclient

And Viola. Remember it's a vibe.

Solution 2

If you don't want to install full mysql, we can fix this by just installing mysqlclient brew install mysqlclient Once cmd is completed it will ask to add below line to ~/.bash_profile:

echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/mysql-client/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Close terminal and start new terminal and proceed with pip install mysqlclient

Solution 3

I am running Python 3.6 on MacOS Catalina. My issue was that I tried to install mysqlclient==1.4.2.post1 and it keeps throwing mysql_config not found error.

This is the steps I took to solve the issue.

1. Install mysql-connector-c using brew (if you have mysql already install unlink first brew unlink mysql) - brew install mysql-connector-c
2. Open mysql_config and edit the file around line 112

# Create options 
libs="-L$pkglibdir"
libs="$libs -lmysqlclient -lssl -lcrypto"

3. brew info openssl - this will give you more information on what needs to be done about putting openssl in PATH
4. in relation to step 3, you need to do this to put openssl in PATH - echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/opt/openssl/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
5. for compilers to find openssl - export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
6. for compilers to find openssl - export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"

Solution 4

Also this happens when I was installing mysqlclient,

$ pip install mysqlclient

As user3429036 said,

$ brew install mysql

Solution 5

brew install mysql added mysql to /usr/local/Cellar/..., so I needed to add :/usr/local/Cellar/ to my $PATH and then which mysql_config worked!

View more solutions

Comments

[martin-martin]

My libs inside of mysql_config was already as described in "Change to" section. However, adding the the PATH to private/etc helped to allow the global install of mysqlclient that was failing before.

[Neil C. Obremski]

I saw your answer after finding the binaries on disk by running sudo lsof -i :3306 to see the PID of the active MySQL process and then running sudo -P <pid> on that to see its open files. This came up with /usr/local/mysql-8.0.18-macos10.14-x86_64/bin which I added to $PATH and voila!

[Yagimutsu]

Thank you! I tried so many things and your method worked for me.

[Umang]

I got it installed globally but still not able to install on my virtual environment. Looks like some mysql_config error. Any ideas on how to install it locally?

[supreme Pooba]

it is actually brew install mysql-client