PIP Install Numpy throws an error "ascii codec can't decode byte 0xe2"

Question

I have a freshly installed Ubuntu on a freshly built computer. I just installed python-pip using apt-get. Now when I try to pip install Numpy and Pandas, it gives the following error.

I've seen this error mentioned in quite a few places on SO and Google, but I haven't been able to find a solution. Some people mention it's a bug, some threads are just dead... What's going on?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/pip", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('pip==1.5.4', 'console_scripts', 'pip')()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/__init__.py", line 185, in main
    return command.main(cmd_args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 161, in main
    text = '\n'.join(complete_log)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 72: ordinal not in range(128)

Solution 1

I had this exact problem recently and used

apt-get install python-numpy

This adds numpy to your system python interpreter. I may have had to do the same for matplotlib. To use in a virtualenv, you have to create your environment using the

--system-site-packages

option

http://www.scipy.org/install.html

Solution 2

For me @Charles Duffy comment solved it. Put this in your env:

LC_ALL=C

You can add it to your .bashrc with a line like this:

export LC_ALL=C

But take in care that you'll affect all other programs. So you may want to use it just for the pip run:

$ LC_ALL=C pip install ...

Solution 3

Try updating pip:

pip install -U pip

Solution 4

I had that problem with matplotlib package. I had to execute:

export LC_ALL=C
pip install --upgrade setuptools

Solution 5

For me this was solved by ignoring a (presumably) corrupted cache with

pip install --no-cache-dir ...

as described here: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/2674

View more solutions

Comments

[Josh.F]

Thanks! Also, I found that if python-dev doesn't come stock on the computer, you need that too

[Jeff M.]

Yeah. I remember that now.. Good catch.

[fiatjaf]

You don't need to recreate your virtualenv, you can modify an existing one with virtualenv VIRTUALENV_DIR --system-site-packages.

[hello_there_andy]

this fixed the same error I had with pip install scipy, thanks

[tourdownunder]

Same here. Upgraded VM instance from 1 to a 2 gig RAM temporarily while installing.

[baltasvejas]

Had same issue on Ubuntu server 14.02. sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev solved the issue.

[Mark]

This solves the problem but I think you should at least mention you are making (all) system packages available, so the point of using virtualenv is partially defeated...

[moi]

This seems to be the correct answer. Using --system-site-packages was not an option for me.

[user1158559]

This is only an indirect answer, but it teaches something and does not deserve to be downvoted.

[Gil Hiram]

a better wording for you answer would be: add "export LC_ALL=C" to your ~/.bashrc

[msemelman]

@GilHiram Depends on your shell type you may have to set up this env variable in other places. unix.stackexchange.com/questions/50665/…

[Arjun]

The install didn't work for me both within, and outside a virtualenv so using --system-site-packages was not the right answer. I got it to work inside a virtualenv with LC_ALL=C pip install ....

[kalebo]

This worked for me on debian jessie inside of a venv.

[WestCoastProjects]

what does export LC_ALL=C mean / do ?

[radtek]

@javadba It forces applications to use the default language for output, and forces sorting to be bytewise.

[Barmaley]

locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 worked for me as well! Or RUN locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 in Dockerfile