CODEWITHSUNDEEP
virtualenvpython-3.6centos7
ericfrey
ericfrey

Reputation: 41

Unable to create virtual environment on CentOS 7.8 and python3.6

I have two servers that are running CentOS 7.8 with all the latest patches as of the date of this post. On one server I can create a venv, and on the other I get an error. Here is the command used to create the venv:

python3.6 -m venv venv

The error is:

Error: Command '['/root/venv/bin/python3.6', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

So it seems there is a problem after the venv is created. In fact, it makes the links to the python interpreters in venv/bin, but the lib64/python3.6 and lib/python3.6 directories that are created have only empty site-packages in them. I get the problem whether running the command with root privileges (as above) or as a non-privileged user. On the other system, which is not quite the same hardware but very similar, I get no errors.

I have tried a bunch of things including completely uninstalling all the python3 rpms and reinstalling them on both systems. The python3 modules installed are: python3, python3-devel, python3-libs, python3-other-rpm-macros, python3-pip, python3-rpm-generators, python3-setuptools, python3-tkinter, python3-wheel. All these are installed using the centos repos.

I have searched the internet and one thing that works is to use --no-pip. However, not surprisingly, if I do that I get a venv with no pip, which does not work very well. The version of pip that is installed with the rpm is version 9.0.3. However, I have tried upgrading pip:

python3.6 -m pip install --upgrade pip

This installs pip 20.1. Interestingly, it is installed in /usr/local/lib/python/site-packages. In any event, it doesn't change anything and I get essentially the same error message.

I have even gone as far as rsyncing the /usr/lib/python3.6 and /usr/lib64/python3.6 (using -avu --delete) on the two servers so that they are identical. All to no avail. I am at a loss to know what to do.

I can of course hack things to make them work, but since I am using this to automatically build test environments I really need to get it working automatically. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 8745

Answers (1)

Chris
Chris

Reputation: 328

I've had the same issue on CentOS Linux release 7.9.2009 (Core) and solved it by installing the following system packages:

yum install python36-devel
yum install python36-setuptools
yum install python36-virtualenv

python3.6 -m pip install --upgrade pip

Used virtualenv to install the venv into the project-root:

python3 -m virtualenv venv-dev

After sourcing the venv everything looks good and I could install the needed requirements:

. ./venv-dev/bin/activate

python3 --version
Python 3.6.8

pip3 --version
pip 21.1.1 from /project/root/dir/venv-dev/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pip (python 3.6)

pip3 install -r requirements/dev.txt

Successfully installed  ...

Upvotes: 4

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