Python PIP Install throws TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -=: 'Retry' and 'int'

Question

Using pip install for any module apparently on my Ubuntu 16.04 system with python 2.7.11+ throws this error:

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -=: 'Retry' and 'int'

What is wrong with pip? How could I reinstall it, if necessary?

Update: Full traceback is below

sunny@sunny:~$ pip install requests
Collecting requests
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 209, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/commands/install.py", line 328, in run
    wb.build(autobuilding=True)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/wheel.py", line 748, in build
    self.requirement_set.prepare_files(self.finder)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 360, in prepare_files
    ignore_dependencies=self.ignore_dependencies))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_set.py", line 512, in _prepare_file
    finder, self.upgrade, require_hashes)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/req/req_install.py", line 273, in populate_link
    self.link = finder.find_requirement(self, upgrade)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/index.py", line 442, in find_requirement
    all_candidates = self.find_all_candidates(req.name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/index.py", line 400, in find_all_candidates
    for page in self._get_pages(url_locations, project_name):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/index.py", line 545, in _get_pages
    page = self._get_page(location)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/index.py", line 648, in _get_page
    return HTMLPage.get_page(link, session=self.session)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/index.py", line 757, in get_page
    "Cache-Control": "max-age=600",
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/requests-2.9.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl/requests/sessions.py", line 480, in get
    return self.request('GET', url, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pip/download.py", line 378, in request
    return super(PipSession, self).request(method, url, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/requests-2.9.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl/requests/sessions.py", line 468, in request
    resp = self.send(prep, **send_kwargs)
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/requests-2.9.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl/requests/sessions.py", line 576, in send
    r = adapter.send(request, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/CacheControl-0.11.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl/cachecontrol/adapter.py", line 46, in send
    resp = super(CacheControlAdapter, self).send(request, **kw)
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/requests-2.9.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl/requests/adapters.py", line 376, in send
    timeout=timeout
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/urllib3-1.13.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl/urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 610, in urlopen
    _stacktrace=sys.exc_info()[2])
  File "/usr/share/python-wheels/urllib3-1.13.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl/urllib3/util/retry.py", line 228, in increment
    total -= 1
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -=: 'Retry' and 'int'

Solution 1

Ubuntu comes with a version of PIP from precambrian and that's how you have to upgrade it if you do not want to spend hours and hours debugging pip related issues.

apt-get remove python-pip python3-pip
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
python get-pip.py
python3 get-pip.py

As you observed I included information for both Python 2.x and 3.x

Solution 2

If you are behind a proxy, you must do some extra configuration steps before starting the installation. You must set the environment variable http_proxy to the proxy address. Using bash this is accomplished with the command

export http_proxy="http://user:[email protected]:port/" 

You can also provide the

--proxy=[user:pass@]url:port 

parameter to pip. The [user:pass@] portion is optional.

Solution 3

Updating setuptools has worked out fine for me.

sudo pip install --upgrade setuptools

Solution 4

First of all, this problem exists because of network issues, and uninstalling and re-installing everything won't be of much help. Probably you are behind proxy, and in that case you need to set proxy.

But in my case, I was facing the problem because I wasn't behind proxy. Generally, I work behind proxy, but when working from home, I set the proxy to None in Network settings.

But I was still getting the same errors even after removing the proxy settings.

So, when I did type

env | grep proxy

I found something like this :

http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:1234/

And this was the reason I was still getting the very same error, even when I thought I had removed the proxy settings.

To unset this proxy, type

unset http_proxy

Follow the same approach for all the other entries, such as https_proxy.

Solution 5

What happens here is that the the vendored versions of request/urllib3 clash when imported in two different places (same code, but different names). If you then have a network error, it doesn't retry to get the wheel, but fails with the above error. See here for a deeper dive into this error.

For the solution with system pip, see above.

If you have this problem in a virtualenv built by python -m venv (which still copies the wheels from /usr/share/python-wheels, even if you have pip installed separately), the easiest way to "fix" it seems to be:

1. create the virtualenv: /usr/bin/python3.6 -m venv ...
2. install requests into the environment (this might raise the above error): <venv>/bin/pip install requests
3. remove the copied versions of requests which would be used by pip: rm <venv>/share/python-wheels/{requests,chardet,urllib3}-*.whl

Now a <venv>/bin/pip uses the installed version of requests which has urllib3 vendored.

View more solutions

Comments

[Lukas Körfer]

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review

[Yogesh Gupta]

Does it look better now? I just thought i should mention what i found helpful

[Arun Das]

This helped me big time in my OpenStack cluster !! Good one Deepak !

[Eric]

It's not a solution: I run as root in docker and have the same issue. Also you don't explain why running as root helps.

[Zeinab Abbasimazar]

@Eric, I just used try&error approach; I don't know the underlying purpose. It worked for me, so I suggested.

[krsoni]

Thanks, I just removed this /usr/share/python-wheels/urllib3-1.19.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl and it's fixed now (without virtualenv).

[krsoni]

Actually in my case, I was not using the virtual env.

[Jan Katins]

If you remove the whl files directly in /usr/share/python-wheels, python -m venv will not create a useable <venv>/bin/pip anymore. So if you remove these files you should be sure that you do not need it. If you do need both a system pip and a venv pip, you need to do install the system one with get-pip.py (See stackoverflow.com/a/37531821/1380673) and you need to remove the whl files in each venv.

[allan.simon]

the error happen to me while running this very exact command :(

[Raúl Salinas-Monteagudo]

It fixed the error for me on a Raspbian Sketch Lite.

[Stefan Wegener]

I am also running Raspian Stretch Lite and it did not fix the error.

[mayid]

Worked for me too. Actually, after doing this, I realised that the errors used to appear after: Collecting setuptools (from kiwisolver>=1.0.1->matplotlib)

[imbatman]

I concur this worked beautifully "python -m pip install --upgrade pip"

[Sam Hammamy]

This worked for me as well on an Raspian Stretch. Please accept this answer to make it easier to find

[Pipo]

needed a reboot after that to bake it work with raspbian

[sir__finley]

This command cause the same TypeError for me on Debian9. This is not universal solution.

[gbarry]

If the top answer, "PIP from precambrian" is causing it, then this is an appropriate simple fix. Worked for me while attempting to install awscli...in Raspbian Stretch.