You need to install postgresql-server-dev-X.Y for building a server-side extension or libpq-dev for building a client-side application

Question

I am working on Django project with virtualenv and connect it to local postgres database. when i run the project is says,

ImportError: No module named psycopg2.extensions

then i used this command to install

pip install psycopg2

then during the installation it gives following error.

Downloading/unpacking psycopg2==2.4.4
  Downloading psycopg2-2.4.4.tar.gz (648kB): 648kB downloaded
  Running setup.py (path:/home/muhammadtaqi/Projects/MyProjects/OnlineElectionCampaign/venv/build/psycopg2/setup.py) egg_info for package psycopg2

    Error: You need to install postgresql-server-dev-X.Y for building a server-side extension or libpq-dev for building a client-side application.

    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    running egg_info

creating pip-egg-info/psycopg2.egg-info

writing pip-egg-info/psycopg2.egg-info/PKG-INFO

writing top-level names to pip-egg-info/psycopg2.egg-info/top_level.txt

writing dependency_links to pip-egg-info/psycopg2.egg-info/dependency_links.txt

writing manifest file 'pip-egg-info/psycopg2.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'

warning: manifest_maker: standard file '-c' not found



Error: You need to install postgresql-server-dev-X.Y for building a server-side extension or libpq-dev for building a client-side application.



----------------------------------------
Cleaning up...
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in /home/muhammadtaqi/Projects/MyProjects/OnlineElectionCampaign/venv/build/psycopg2
Storing debug log for failure in /home/muhammadtaqi/.pip/pip.log

Have you installed that package? If not, installing it should solve the problem. Please note that installing `postgresql-server-X.Y` alone would not help, because that just installs the server binary, libraries and data files, not the development files (which are in the aforementioned package). — Abrixas2, Jan 31 '15 at 16:18

score 533 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 26 '16 at 21:04

533

Use these following commands, this will solve the error:

sudo apt-get install postgresql

then fire:

sudo apt-get install python-psycopg2

and last:

sudo apt-get install libpq-dev

edited Jan 26 '16 at 21:04

silviomoreto

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answered Mar 09 '15 at 09:04

MegaBytes

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I got `E: Package 'postgresql-9.1' has no installation candidate` for the first one but `sudo apt-get install postgresql` was fine. Other than that, perfect! – aralar Apr 26 '15 at 02:19
@miguel5, can you give brief what you did, you can fire the last command first also. – MegaBytes Apr 26 '15 at 07:55
Thanks, this got me further than I was, however I still couldn't easy_install psycopg2 in my virtualenv I had to also "sudo apt-get install python-dev" – Amien May 12 '15 at 16:52
@Amien you don't need to install psycopg2 in virtualenv. it should be system level so please use `apt-get`. – MegaBytes May 13 '15 at 04:52
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I just needed client libs. "sudo apt-get install libpq-dev" solved it for me. Thanks – Priyeshj Oct 02 '15 at 03:31
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I found that I had to also install `sudo apt-get install python-dev` in addition to get it to finally work – ScottMcC Dec 04 '15 at 07:54
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Thank you! `sudo apt-get install libpq-dev` worked for me! – Julian Guterman May 17 '16 at 16:45
my problem was in `libpq-dev` try installing it – alamin Dec 26 '17 at 08:55
If you install `psycopg2` from a binary package, you don't need `libpq-dev`. Am I missing something? – x-yuri Feb 16 '18 at 21:46
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use `sudo apt-get install python3-psycopg2` to add to python3 – Ramesh Verma Sep 11 '19 at 17:08
works but just wondering does this fix it but not pip3 install psycopg2? – Ahmed Apr 04 '20 at 21:12
sometimes running sudo apt update will fix this type of errors. I tried both solution but failed. running sudo apt udpate solved it. – Aleem Jun 02 '20 at 19:33

Muhammad Taqi · Answer 2 · 2015-03-10T11:56:56.170

77

I just run this command as a root from terminal and problem is solved,

sudo apt-get install -y postgis postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1
pip install psycopg2

or

sudo apt-get install libpq-dev python-dev
pip install psycopg2

edited Mar 10 '15 at 11:56

answered Jan 31 '15 at 18:10

Muhammad Taqi

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Thanks a lot, `libpq-dev` and `python-dev` did necessary magic – avtomaton Nov 13 '15 at 23:23
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`postgis`? woot – techkuz May 20 '19 at 13:47
sometimes running sudo apt update will fix this type of errors. I tried both solution but failed. running sudo apt udpate solved it. – Aleem Jun 02 '20 at 19:32

score 66 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 06 '19 at 21:42

66

Just install libpq-dev

$ sudo apt-get install libpq-dev

answered Jun 06 '19 at 21:42

Ivan

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I must do it every install pg gem for new project. `sudo apt install libpq5=10.15-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 ( if error occur)` and then `sudo apt-get install libpq-dev python-dev` – babie Jan 17 '21 at 18:38

ruhanbidart · Answer 4 · 2015-11-27T20:02:16.187

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For me this simple command solved the problem:

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev python-dev

Then I can do:

 pip install psycopg2

edited Nov 27 '15 at 20:02

answered Nov 19 '15 at 15:54

ruhanbidart

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score 20 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 20 '17 at 06:39

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For Python 3, I did:

sudo apt install python3-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib python3-psycopg2 libpq-dev

and then I was able to do:

pip3 install psycopg2

answered Apr 20 '17 at 06:39

Garrett

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Thank you. Worked for me fine. I think from now on we should only focus on python 3 solutions. – alexopoulos7 Jan 19 '21 at 08:15

score 17 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 09 '19 at 09:22

17

They changed the packaging for psycopg2. Installing the binary version fixed this issue for me. The above answers still hold up if you want to compile the binary yourself.

See http://initd.org/psycopg/docs/news.html#what-s-new-in-psycopg-2-8.

Binary packages no longer installed by default. The ‘psycopg2-binary’ package must be used explicitly.

And http://initd.org/psycopg/docs/install.html#binary-install-from-pypi

So if you don't need to compile your own binary, use:

pip install psycopg2-binary

answered Apr 09 '19 at 09:22

robkorv

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You sir saved my life – Haroun Hajem Jun 19 '19 at 12:24
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`psycopg2-binary` must not be used in production, because it will cause some bugs. – suhailvs Nov 26 '19 at 09:38
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`psycopg2-binary` should not be used in production: http://initd.org/psycopg/docs/install.html#binary-install-from-pypi (Copied text: The psycopg2-binary package is meant for beginners to start playing with Python and PostgreSQL without the need to meet the build requirements. If you are the maintainer of a publish package depending on psycopg2 you shouldn’t use ‘psycopg2-binary’ as a module dependency. For production use you are advised to use the source distribution.) – Joseph Victor Zammit Jan 23 '20 at 18:29

score 13 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 05 '18 at 10:53

You must setup postgresql-server-dev-X.Y, where X.Y. your's servers version, and it will install libpq-dev and other servers variables at modules for server side developing. In my case it was

apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-9.5

Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libmysqlclient18 mysql-common Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed:
libpq-dev Suggested packages: postgresql-doc-10 The following NEW packages will be installed: libpq-dev postgresql-server-dev-9.5

In your's case

sudo apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-X.Y
sudo apt-get install python-psycopg2

score 5 · Answer 8 · answered May 14 '19 at 19:37

I was using a virtual environment on Ubuntu 18.04, and since I only wanted to install it as a client, I only had to do:

sudo apt install libpq-dev
pip install psycopg2

And installed without problems. Of course, you can use the binary as other answers said, but I preferred this solution since it was stated in a requirements.txt file.

score 2 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 11 '20 at 10:33

2

Run the command below;

sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib
pip install psycopg2

answered Sep 11 '20 at 10:33

Surya Bista

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score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 29 '21 at 11:08

In my case, I was facing this problem when I ran pip install -r requirements.txt to install all packages for a Django project with PostgreSQL database on an Ubuntu machine, I ran into this error and many other installation errors.

To solve this one, I ran the following commands:

sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib  

sudo apt install libpq-dev

sudo apt install python3-dev

sudo apt install python3-pip

sudo apt install python3-psycopg2

pip3 install psycopg2

pip3 install psycopg2-binary

Plus, also check if the Ubuntu and Python and Psycopg versions are compatible together.

Also, pip install aiopg, solve the issue when i ran into it the second time.

You need to install postgresql-server-dev-X.Y for building a server-side extension or libpq-dev for building a client-side application

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