How to install PIL in Ubuntu 11.04?

Question

I see this question asked all over the internet, and I've tried following them all, but I still can't get PIL to work.

I tried symbolically linking the zlib, jpeg, etc. libraries via:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib/

I tried editing the setup.py file, adding this line:

add_directory(library_dirs, "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu")

In fact, running $ sudo python setup.py install shows that JPEG, ZLIB/PNG, etc. support is Available. (I'm installing it for both 2.5 and 2.7, works in neither)

sudo python2.5 setup.py install
running install
running build
running build_py
running build_ext
--------------------------------------------------------------------
PIL 1.1.7 SETUP SUMMARY
--------------------------------------------------------------------
version       1.1.7
platform      linux2 2.5.6 (r256:88840, Feb  1 2012, 15:55:08)
              [GCC 4.5.2]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*** TKINTER support not available
--- JPEG support available
--- ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support available
--- FREETYPE2 support available
--- LITTLECMS support available

But after all that, I still get a decoder %s not available error.

I'm at my wits end. Anything else I might have missed?

My environment: 64-bit Ubuntu 11.04 running in a VirtualBox VM.

Here's what I do to test if PIL works or not

$ python
>>> from PIL import Image
>>> im = Image.open("photo.jpg")
>>> im.rotate(45)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 1359, in rotate
  self.load()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/ImageFile.py", line 189, in load
  d = Image._getdecoder(self.mode, d, a, self.decoderconfig)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 385, in _getdecoder
  raise IOError("decoder %s not available" % decoder_name)
IOError: decoder zip not available
>>> 

Answer 1

I have successfully reinstalled PIL in Ubuntu 12.04 like this:

pip uninstall PIL
apt-get install libjpeg8 libjpeg62-dev libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib/
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib/
ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib/
pip install -U PIL

It does not raise the IOError: decoder zip not available anymore after reinstalling the PIL. My error traceback was:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "convert_image.py", line 15, in <module>
    image.save('output.png')
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 1406, in save
    self.load()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/ImageFile.py", line 189, in load
    d = Image._getdecoder(self.mode, d, a, self.decoderconfig)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 385, in _getdecoder
    raise IOError("decoder %s not available" % decoder_name)
IOError: decoder zip not available

Answer 2

I found it to be a combination of the two above when installing with a requirements.txt on Ubuntu. I'm using Vagrant to run a chef script, and found this approach works best for me:

First, I use a bash script to setup PIL:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

sudo apt-get build-dep python-imaging
sudo ln -s -f /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s -f /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib/
sudo ln -s -f /usr/lib/`uname -i`-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib/

Next, during the requirements.txt install, the top of the file looks like:

--allow-external PIL
--allow-unverified PIL

Django==1.5.4
PIL==1.1.7
...

Of course, this is an unsecured way of doing it, but works for dev and quick builds. For production, it's best to download and verify all packages manually and install them from a local managed repository.

Answer 3

Try reinstalling from scratch:

1. Look for lib/pythonXX/site-packages/PIL. Delete all this directory along with the file PIL.pth. This should completely remove te package.

2. Unpack the PIL installation files from the *tar.gz you downloaded.

3. Add the directories where your jpeg library is, with add_directory(...) as you did before. (Use ldconfig -P | grep jpeg to find where the libraries are).

4. Retry python setup.py build, then python setup.py install. Test it.

My experience was:

Not performing step 2 did not rebuild the package. Not performing step 3 was the root cause. Not performing step 1 may have played a part.

This seems to be a bug in PIL installation, not in Ubuntu's or any distro's package structure.

And just for the record: it is quite common to have more than one Python version installed on a system, which makes it necessary to install packages manually. Some people have a 2.x with a 3.x for experimenting, shared hostings have 2.5s and applications need a 2.7, just to give two examples.

Answer 4

As always, use the package manager:

sudo apt-get install python-imaging

It'll deal with it all for you. The packages are available.

Manually installing, in any Linux distro, is a wasted endeavour, unless the packages really don't exist. Package maintainers spend time ensuring that the package works and installs correctly, there is no point duplicating their effort. Especially not to manually install something that then doesn't have the advantages of a package - no automatic updating, no easy removal, etc...