Not able to install Python packages [SSL: TLSV1_ALERT_PROTOCOL_VERSION]

Question

I am trying to install a Python library using pip, getting an SSL error:

~/projects/base  pre-master±  pip install xdict

Collecting xdict
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/xdict/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: [SSL: TLSV1_ALERT_PROTOCOL_VERSION] tlsv1 alert protocol version (_ssl.c:590) - skipping
  Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement xdict (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for xdict

pip version: pip 9.0.1

How do I fix this error?

Solution 1

Upgrade pip as follows:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python

Note: You may need to use sudo python above if not in a virtual environment.

(Note that upgrading pip using pip i.e pip install --upgrade pip will also not upgrade it correctly. It's just a chicken-and-egg issue. pip won't work unless using TLS >= 1.2.)

As mentioned in this detailed answer, this is due to the recent TLS deprecation for pip. Python.org sites have stopped support for TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1.

From the Python status page:

Completed - The rolling brownouts are finished, and TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1 have been disabled. Apr 11, 15:37 UTC

For PyCharm (virtualenv) users:

1. Run virtual environment with shell. (replace "./venv/bin/activate" to your own path)

   source ./venv/bin/activate
   

2. Run upgrade

   curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python
   

3. Restart your PyCharm instance, and check your Python interpreter in Preference.

Solution 2

But if the curl command itself fails with error, or "tlsv1 alert protocol version" persists even after upgrading pip, it means your operating system's underlying OpenSSL library version<1.0.1 or Python version<2.7.9 (or <3.4 in Python 3) do not support the newer TLS 1.2 protocol that pip needs to connect to PyPI since about a year ago. You can easily check it in Python interpreter:

>>> import ssl
>>> ssl.OPENSSL_VERSION
'OpenSSL 0.9.8o 01 Jun 2010'
>>> ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1_2
 AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'PROTOCOL_TLSv1_2'

The AttributeError (instead of expected '5') means your Python stdlib ssl module, compiled against old openssl lib, is lacking support for the TLSv1.2 protocol (even if the openssl library can or could be updated later).

Fortunately, it can be solved without upgrading Python (and the whole system), by manually installing extra Python packages -- the detailed step-by-step guide is available here on Stackoverflow.

Note, curl and pip and wget all depend on the same OpenSSL lib for establishing SSL connections (use $ openssl version command). libcurl supports TLS 1.2 since curl version 7.34, but older curl versions should be able to connect if you had OpenSSL version 1.0.2 (or later).

---

P.S.
For Python 3, please use python3 and pip3 everywhere (unless you are in a venv/virtualenv), including the curl command from above:
$ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3 --user

Solution 3

Following @Anupam's answer on OS X resulted in the following error for me, regardless of permissions I ran it with:

Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: ...

What eventually worked was to download a newer pip package (9.0.3) from PyPI directly from my browser - https://pypi.org/simple/pip/, extract the contents, and then pip install the package locally:

pip install ./pip-9.0.3/

This fixed my [SSL: TLSV1_ALERT_PROTOCOL_VERSION] errors.

Solution 4

@Anupam's solution worked for me. However, I had to use sudo and specify the exact location of my virtual Python environment:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo /Users/{your user name}/{path to python}/bin/python

Solution 5

To upgrade the local version I used a slight variant:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python - --user

This problem arises if you keep your pip and packages under your home directory as described in this gist.

View more solutions

Comments

[Mitul Shah]

Follow this answer stackoverflow.com/a/46808948/2419644

[phd]

Possible duplicate of Unable to install python libraries

[Mirza715]

Make sure you have the correct openssl version. Then recompile the Python with the openssl path.

[Mirza715]

make sure you have the correct openssl version.

[Simar]

This worked for me! I had to add sudo at the front because of permission denied errors. Thanks!

[Wallace]

Requires sudo to work: curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo python

[Anupam]

@Simar @Wallace yeah, may require sudo if not in a virtual environment. Added that bit as well in the answer now.

[Chris]

If you're not in a virtual environment you may need to specify the path to your python binary, as Ilya mentions below

[jar]

^ this one for those of us not using the default python on OSX. I guess the question wasn't OSX specific, but anyway, if you're not running Linux, this works --- unless you're content writing over the system installed Python.

[amm]

This one worked for me, I use the python on OSX. My situation I spent a week trying to install any pip package and it failed. I uninstalled pip and from this time I can not do anything till I got this command which installed pip for me. Thank you!

[Jan]

I also realized I had to run pip3, not just pip — check version with command -V to make sure you're running the right pip!!

[nick fox]

On OSX this worked better for me curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo -H python3

[Andre]

curl: (35) error:1407742E:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:tlsv1 alert protocol version

[driven_spider]

This Solution dint work for me. On OSX, I use @nickfox solution, I started getting some other errors ERROR: Compiling fastdtw because it depends on /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python‌​3.5/site-packages/Cy‌​thon/Includes/numpy/‌​math.pxd. saw this error down the way, Download error on pypi.org/simple/pytest-runner. I installed pytest-runner separately, I was able to install and solve my probelm

[eruciform]

I needed to run: sudo -H pip3.5 install requests[security] afterwards, too.

[2540625]

This curl command seems to do nothing for eternity.

[Anupam]

@2540625 try running bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py in your browser - does it return the py file?

[Kevin]

I'm stuck with Python 2.6.6 - the script doesn't work with anything older than Python 3.6.