mysql_config not found when installing mysqldb python interface

I am trying to get a Python script to run on the linux server I'm connected to via ssh. The script uses mysqldb. I have all the other components I need, but when I try to install mySQLdb via setuptools like so:,

python setup.py install

I get the following error report related to the mysql_config command.

sh: mysql_config: command not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 15, in <module>
    metadata, options = get_config()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/MySQL-python-1.2.3/setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
    libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/MySQL-python-1.2.3/setup_posix.py", line 24, in mysql_config
    raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

Has anyone else encountered this error and if so how did you resolve it/what can I do to successfully install mysqldb?

mySQLdb is a python interface for mysql, but it is not mysql itself. And apparently mySQLdb needs the command 'mysql_config', so you need to install that first.

Can you confirm that you did or did not install mysql itself, by running "mysql" from the shell? That should give you a response other than "mysql: command not found".

Which linux distribution are you using? Mysql is pre-packaged for most linux distributions. For example, for debian / ubuntu, installing mysql is as easy as

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

mysql-config is in a different package, which can be installed from (again, assuming debian / ubuntu):

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

if you are using mariadb, the drop in replacement for mysql, then run

sudo apt-get install libmariadbclient-dev

Reference: https://github.com/JudgeGirl/Judge-sender/issues/4#issuecomment-186542797

I was installing python-mysql on Ubuntu 12.04 using

pip install mysql-python

First I had the same problem:

Not Found "mysql_config"

This worked for me

$ sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

Then I had this problem:

...
_mysql.c:29:20: error fatal: Python.h: No existe el archivo o el directorio

compilación terminada.

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

Then I tried with

apt-get install python-dev

(If you're using python3, install python3-dev instead.)

And then I was happy :)

pip install mysql-python
    Installing collected packages: mysql-python
      Running setup.py install for mysql-python
        building '_mysql' extension
        gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -Dversion_info=(1,2,4,'beta',4) -D__version__=1.2.4b4 -I/usr/include/mysql -I/usr/include/python2.7 -c _mysql.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/_mysql.o -DBIG_JOINS=1 -fno-strict-aliasing -g
        In file included from _mysql.c:44:0:
        /usr/include/mysql/my_config.h:422:0: aviso: se redefinió "HAVE_WCSCOLL" [activado por defecto]
        /usr/include/python2.7/pyconfig.h:890:0: nota: esta es la ubicación de la definición previa
        gcc -pthread -shared -Wl,-O1 -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/_mysql.o -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -lmysqlclient_r -lpthread -lz -lm -lrt -ldl -o build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/_mysql.so
    
Successfully installed mysql-python
Cleaning up...

(Specific to Mac OS X)

I have tried a lot of things, but these set of commands finally worked for me.

1. Install mysql

   brew install mysql
   

2. brew unlink mysql
3. brew install mysql-connector-c
4. Add the mysql bin folder to PATH

   export PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/8.0.11/bin:$PATH
   

5. mkdir /usr/local/Cellar/lib/
6. Create a symlink

   sudo ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/8.0.11/lib/libmysqlclient.21.dylib /usr/local/Cellar/lib/libmysqlclient.21.dylib
   

7. brew reinstall openssl (source)
8. Finally, install mysql-client

   LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/ pip install mysqlclient
   

Update: In case this doesn't work, @vinyll suggests to run brew link mysql before step 8.

On Red Hat I had to do

sudo yum install mysql-devel gcc gcc-devel python-devel
sudo easy_install mysql-python

Then it worked.

On python 3.5.2

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev

The below worked for me on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:

apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev

All though it worked, i still went ahead to do the below:

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

I got the same error while trying to install mysql-python.

This is how I fixed it.

sudo PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin/:$PATH pip install mysql-python

The problem was that the installer could not find the mysql_config in the default path. Now it can ..and it worked..

 15 warnings generated.
    clang -bundle -undefined dynamic_lookup -Wl,-F. build/temp.macosx-10.8-intel-2.7/_mysql.o -L/usr/local/mysql/lib -lmysqlclient_r -lz -lm -lmygcc -o build/lib.macosx-10.8-intel-2.7/_mysql.so -arch x86_64
    
Successfully installed mysql-python
Cleaning up...

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

I fixed this problem with the following steps:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev
sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo python setup.py install

The commands (mysql too) mPATH might be missing.

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

Step1:-Install Python3 & Python3-dev Both

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-dev

Step2:- Install Python & Mysql Connector

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

step3:- Install python mysql client

sudo apt-get install mysqlclient

This will Solve your Problem

The package libmysqlclient-dev is deprecated, so use the below command to fix it.

Package libmysqlclient-dev is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source

sudo apt-get install default-libmysqlclient-dev

If you're on macOS and already installed [email protected] via brew install:

1. brew install mysql-connector-c
2. brew unlink [email protected]
3. brew link --overwrite --dry-run [email protected] first, to see what symlinks are getting overwritten
4. brew link --overwrite --force [email protected] to actually overwrite mysql-related symlinks with [email protected]
5. pip install mysqlclient

I think the most convenient way to solve this problem in 2020 is using another python package. We don't need install any other binary software.

Try this

pip install mysql-connector-python

and then

import mysql.connector

mydb = mysql.connector.connect(
          host="",
          user="",
          passwd="",
          database=""
          )      
cursor = mydb.cursor( buffered=True)
cursor.execute('show tables;')
cursor.execute('insert into test values (null, "a",10)')
mydb.commit()
mydb.disconnect()

I fixed it by installing libmysqlclient:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient16-dev

In centos 7 this works for me :

yum install mariadb-devel
pip install mysqlclient

The MySQL-python package is using the mysql_config command to learn about the mysql configuration on your host. Your host does not have the mysql_config command.

The MySQL development libraries package (MySQL-devel-xxx) from dev.mysql.com provides this command and the libraries needed by the MySQL-python package. The MySQL-devel packages are found in the download - community server area. The MySQL development library package names start with MySQL-devel and vary based MySQL version and linux platform (e.g. MySQL-devel-5.5.24-1.linux2.6.x86_64.rpm.)

Note that you do not need to install mysql server.

For Alpine Linux:

$ apk add mariadb-dev mariadb-client mariadb-libs

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL and became the new standard as of Alpine 3.2. See https://bugs.alpinelinux.org/issues/4264

On my Fedora 23 machine I had to run the following:

sudo dnf install mysql-devel

I think, following lines can be executed on terminal

 sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/bin/mysql_config /usr/sbin/

This mysql_config directory is for zend server on MacOSx. You can do it for linux like following lines

sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config /usr/sbin/

This is default linux mysql directory.

I had this issues and solved if by adding a symlink to mysql_config.

I had installed mysql with homebrew and saw this in the output.

Error: The `brew link` step did not complete successfully

Depending on how you got mysql it will be in different places. In my case /usr/local/Cellar/mysql
Once you know where it is you should be able to ma a symbolic link to where python is looking for it. /usr/local/mysql

This worked for me.

ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/<< VERSION >>/bin/mysql_config   /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

I had the same problem. I solved it by following this tutorial to install Python with python3-dev on Ubuntu 16.04:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev

And now you can set up your virtual environment:

sudo apt-get install -y python3-venv
pyvenv my_env
source my_env/bin/activate

In CentOS 7 , the following things should be done:

#step1:install mysql 
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-yum-repo-quick-guide/en/

#step2:
sudo yum install mysql-devel

or

sudo yum install mysql-community-devel

You need to install the python-dev package:

sudo apt-get install python-dev

sudo apt-get install python-mysqldb

Python 2.5? Sounds like you are using a very old version of Ubuntu Server (Hardy 8.04?) - please confirm which Linux version the server uses.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=python-mysql&searchon=names&suite=all&section=all">python-mysql search on ubuntu package database

Some additional info:

From the README of mysql-python -

Red Hat Linux .............

MySQL-python is pre-packaged in Red Hat Linux 7.x and newer. This includes Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can also build your own RPM packages as described above.

Debian GNU/Linux ................

Packaged as python-mysqldb_::

# apt-get install python-mysqldb

Or use Synaptic.

.. _python-mysqldb: http://packages.debian.org/python-mysqldb

Ubuntu ......

Same as with Debian.

Footnote: If you really are using a server distribution older than Ubuntu 10.04 then you are out of official support, and should upgrade sooner rather than later.

This method is only for those who know that Mysql is installed but still mysql_config can't be find. This happens if python install can't find mysql_config in your system path, which mostly happens if you have done the installation via .dmg Mac Package or installed at some custom path. The easiest and documented way by MySqlDB is to change the site.cfg. Find the mysql_config which is probably in /usr/local/mysql/bin/ and change the variable namely mysql_config just like below and run the installation again. Don't forget to un-comment it by removing "#"

Change below line

> "#mysql_config = /usr/local/bin/mysql_config"

to

> "mysql_config = /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config"

depending upon the path in your system.

By the way I used python install after changing the site.cfg

sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python setup.py install

So far, all solutions (Linux) require sudo or root rights to install . Here is a solution if you do not have root rights and without sudo. (no sudo apt install ...):

1. Download the .deb file of the libmysqlclient-dev, e.g. from this mirror

2. Navigate to the downloaded file and run dpkg -x libmysqlclient-dev_<version tag>.deb . This will extract a folder called usr.

3. Symlink ./usr/bin/mysql_config to somewhere that is found on your $PATH:

   ln -s `pwd` /usr/bin/mysql_config FOLDER_IN_YOUR_PATH

4. It should now be able to find mysql_config

Tested on Ubuntu 18.04.

For macOS Mojave , additional configuration was required, for compilers to find openssl you may need to set:

export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"

I encountered the same problem, just added the path where mysql_config resided to the environment variable PATH and it worked for me.

sudo apt-get build-dep python-mysqldb will install all the dependencies to build the package from PIP/easy_install

As actual error is

gcc ... -I/usr/include/python2.7 ...

_mysql.c:29:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory

and If you can't install python-dev or python-devel packages, you may download archive with needed version of python sources from http://hg.python.org/ and place headers files in proper folder for include

Just type:

$ sudo apt-get install python-dev
$ venv/bin/pip install MySQL-python

This will solve this problems.

In CentOS 7 instead of yum install mysql-devel do yum install mysql-community-devel

This does not require you to add the mysql repo.

On MacOS (OS/X) Catalina, I found that I needed to do this:

 export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin/:/usr/local/mysql-5.7.16-osx10.11-x86_64/bin/

On my computer, the mysql command is in /usr/local/bin (from the standard MacOS installer, not "brew").

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev sudo apt-get install python-dev sudo apt-get install MySQL-python

NOtice you should install python-dev as well, the packages like MySQL-python are compiled from source. The pythonx.x-dev packages contain the necessary header files for linking against python. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11073695/why-does-installing-numpy-require-python-dev-in-kubuntu-12-04