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

It seems mysql_config is missing on your system or the installer could not find it. Be sure mysql_config is really installed.

For example on Debian/Ubuntu you must install the package:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

Maybe the mysql_config is not in your path, it will be the case when you compile by yourself the mysql suite.

Update: For recent versions of debian/ubuntu (as of 2018) it is

sudo apt install default-libmysqlclient-dev

In Mac OS, I simply ran this in terminal to fix:

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

This is the quickest fix I found - it adds it to the path, but I think you're better off adding it permanently (ie add it to /etc/paths) if you plan to install MySQL-python in another environment.

(tested in OSX Mountain Lion)

apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev

Seemed to do the trick.

There maybe various answers for the above issue, below is a aggregated solution.

For Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python-dev
$ sudo apt install python-MySQLdb

For CentOS:

$ yum install python-devel mysql-devel

If you are on MAC Install this globally

brew install mysql

then export path like this

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

Than globally or in your venv whatever you like

pip install MySQL-Python

Note: globally for python3 as Mac can have both python2 & 3

pip3 install MySQL-Python

You can use the MySQL Connector/Python

Installation via PyPip

pip install mysql-connector-python

Further information can be found on the MySQL Connector/Python 1.0.5 beta announcement blog.

On Launchpad there's a good example of how to add-, edit- or remove data with the library.

For centos users:

yum install -y mysql-devel python-devel python-setuptools

then

pip install MySQL-python

If this solution doesn't work, and print gcc compile error like:
_mysql.c:29:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory

You need to specify the path of Python.h, like this:
pip install --global-option=build_ext --global-option="-I/usr/include/python2.6" MySQL-python

I was trying to install mysql-python on an Amazon EC2 Linux instance and I had to install these :

yum install mysql mysql-devel mysql-common mysql-libs gcc

But then I got this error :

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

So I installed :

yum install python-devel

And that did the trick.

For anyone that is using MariaDB instead of MySQL, the solution is to install the libmariadbclient-dev package and create a symbolic link to the config file with the correct name.

For example this worked for me:

ln -s /usr/bin/mariadb_config /usr/bin/mysql_config

For Linux

this works for me

yum install python-devel mysql-devel

Try sudo apt-get build-dep python-mysqldb

OSX Mavericks

Due to changes within osx mavericks & xcode development tools you may get the error on installation

clang: error: unknown argument: '-mno-fused-madd' [-Wunused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future]

therefore use :

sudo ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future pip install mysql-python

for mariadb install libmariadbclient-dev instead of libmysqlclient-dev

sudo apt-get install libmariadbclient-dev

You should install the mysql first:

yum install python-devel mysql-community-devel -y

Then you can install mysqlclient:

pip install  mysqlclient

I had the same problem in the Terraform:light container. It is based on Alpine.

There you have to install mariadb-dev with:

apk add mariadb-dev

But that one is not enough because also all the other dependencies are missed:

apk add python2 py2-pip gcc python2-dev musl-dev

sometimes the error depends on the actual cause. we had a case where mysql-python was installed through the python-mysqldb debian package.

a developer who didn't know this, accidentally ran pip uninstall mysql-python and then failed to recover with pip install mysql-python giving the above error.

pip uninstall mysql-python had destroyed the debian package contents, and of course pip install mysql-python failed because the debian package didn't need any dev files.

the correct solution in that case was apt-get install --reinstall python-mysqldb which restored mysql-python to its original state.

Sequence to be followed.

pip install mysqlclient
sudo apt-get install python3-dev libmysqlclient-dev
pip install configparser 
sudo cp /usr/lib/python3.6/configparser.py /usr/lib/python3.6/ConfigParser.py 

Then try to install the MYSQL-python again. That Worked for me

On Mac:

brew install mysql-client

locate mysql

mdfind mysql | grep bin

then add to path

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Cellar/mysql-client/8.0.23/bin/

or permanently

echo "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Cellar/mysql-client/8.0.23/bin/" >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Had a similar issue trying to install on OS X Server 10.6.8. Here's what I had to do. Using:

MySQL-python 1.2.4b4 (source) MySQL-5.6.19 (binary installer) Python 2.7 (binary installer) NOTE: Installing in virtualenv...

Unzip source, open 'distribute_setup.py' and edit DEFAULT_VERSION to use the latest version of distribute tools, like so:

DEFAULT_VERSION = "0.6.49"

Save. Open 'site.cfg' file and uncomment the path to mysql_config so it looks something like (reference your own path to mysql_config):

# The path to mysql_config.
# Only use this if mysql_config is not on your PATH, or you have some weird
# setup that requires it.
mysql_config = /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

Now clean, build and make will not fail with the 'mysql_config' not found error. Hope this helps someone else trying to make use of their old xserves :-)

Your sudo path does not know about your local path... go into superuser mode, add the path, and install it from there.

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

And you're up and running on OSX. Now you have an updated global python.

if you install MySQL-python in your virtual env, you should check the pip version, if the version is older than 9.0.1, please update it

pip install --upgrade pip

write on 27 Aug, 2021

my macos version is BigSur(14.4), and mysql version is mysql8. It seems like in the higher version of mysql, they delete the my_config.h files but change to the mysql.h.

so your guys should run the following shell:

cd /usr/local/include/mysql
cp mysql.h my_config.h

after that, run pip install MySQL-python and everything will be ok.

on MacOS Mojave, mysql_config is found at /usr/local/bin/ rather than /usr/local/mysql/bin as pointed above, so no need to add anything to path.

In my case my database is running on container and my flask app is running on another container when i tried updating code app got broke with error

   Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
/bin/sh: 1: mysql_config: not found
/bin/sh: 1: mariadb_config: not found
/bin/sh: 1: mysql_config: not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/tmp/pip-build-bya8e734/mysqlclient/setup.py", line 15, in <module>
    metadata, options = get_config()
  File "/tmp/pip-build-bya8e734/mysqlclient/setup_posix.py", line 65, in get_config
    libs = mysql_config("libs")
  File "/tmp/pip-build-bya8e734/mysqlclient/setup_posix.py", line 31, in mysql_config
    raise OSError("{} not found".format(_mysql_config_path))
OSError: mysql_config not found

Key in stack trace is

/bin/sh: 1: mysql_config: not found

because where my flask app is running doesn't have mysql client properly configured so first i installed mysql server and then install

sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.7 -y

Then started MySQL

mansoor@LARC-mansur:~/Documents/clients/HR/DevopsSimulator/web$ sudo systemctl start mysql

Then install flask-mysql package and this time it worked

mansoor@LARC-mansur:~/Documents/clients/HR/DevopsSimulator/web$ sudo pip3 install flask-mysqldb

This is different case but posting here because may be someone else in the world facing same issue