Trouble installing psycopg2 on CentOS

Question

I'm trying to install psycopg2 on CentOS, I followed everything on this tutorial from "On with it: Installing Python 2.6" all the way to when it imports psycopg2, but when I try to import I get the following error:

 Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/opt/python2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/psycopg2/__init__.py", line 69, in <module>
    from _psycopg import BINARY, NUMBER, STRING, DATETIME, ROWID
ImportError: libpq.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

How to troubleshoot this?

This will give the current version installed: python -c "import psycopg2; print(psycopg2.__version__)" — JustBeingHelpful, Jul 10 '16 at 08:09

score 25 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 27 '11 at 19:58

25

psycopg2 is a python wrapper around the PostgreSQL libraries, so you need those installed on your system too.

Since you're using CentOS, try this from the command line to install the postgre libs.

yum install postgresql-libs

answered Jan 27 '11 at 19:58

wkl

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looks like AWS saying "yum doesn't have postgresql-libs" or "-lib" – Surya Nov 19 '14 at 14:49
CentOS 6.2 says: "No package postgresql-libs available" – Mar 31 '15 at 09:55
Does this require sudo access or not ? – rohitsakala Jul 31 '16 at 11:05
@rohitsakala Most likely, yes. – wkl Aug 08 '16 at 19:47
In CentOs 8.0 you must install another package: dnf install postgresql-devel – Dzwiedziu-nkg Jan 02 '20 at 18:33

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 20:04

23

Forget your tutorial.
Install EPEL
yum install python-psycopg2

Django supports Python 2.4 just fine. If you really need Python 2.6 you can also use EPEL (yum install python26) - but there's no psycopg2 package for it yet.

answered Jan 27 '11 at 20:04

Tometzky

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on amz linux at the time of writing this, step 3 is sufficient – user602525 Mar 14 '15 at 02:34
after days of fighting, this was the answer. Thank you! – eis Dec 19 '20 at 10:35

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 02 '13 at 22:50

4

I followed the first answer to install python libs:

yum install postgresql-lib

but it didn't work, so I also did a yum install of the devel and python:

yum install postgresql91-devel.x86_64
yum install postgresql91-python.x86_64

Not sure which one did it, but my guess is the devel.

edited Apr 02 '13 at 22:50

Mxyk

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answered Apr 02 '13 at 22:32

Coaden

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Why the negative comments? INdeed "postgresql-devel" is required! – Stefano May 27 '14 at 17:40
1

@Coaden you should use "postgresql-libs" with a "s" at the end – stupidbodo Mar 24 '15 at 12:46
2

yum install postgresql-devel is what I had to do as well on centos 7 – beardedeagle Oct 30 '15 at 16:16
postgresql-libs isn't sufficient. I just tried it. After installing postgresql-devel it worked. – Deepstop Jun 24 '19 at 15:00
For me this is worked: sudo yum install postgresql-devel followed by sudo pip install psycopg2 – smishra Aug 10 '20 at 16:06

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 24 '23 at 10:16

I had the same issue that python-psycopg2 disappeared after a PostgreSQL uninstallation and yum install python-psycopg2 no longer found the package. Here is how I got it installed again.

First, install the pgdg-redhat yum repository:

yum install -y https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-6-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

This will create the file /etc/yum.repos.d/pgdg-redhat-all.repo which lists many repositories (of which most seem to be broken). The only source of python-psycopg2 seems to be the pgdg11 repo:

[pgdg11]
name=PostgreSQL 11 for RHEL/CentOS $releasever - $basearch
enabled=0
baseurl=https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/11/redhat/rhel-$releasever-$basearch
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-PGDG

Now you can install the package by explicitly enabling the repository containing the package:

yum install python-psycopg2 --enablerepo=pgdg11

Alvin · Answer 5 · 2015-04-29T21:41:35.220

-4

for ubuntu you'll want

sudo apt-get install python2.7-psycopg2

or if using python 3

sudo apt-get install python3-psycopg2

edited Apr 29 '15 at 21:41

answered May 28 '14 at 18:22

Alvin

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not sure why this got a few down-votes -- was up-voted previously for being useful to other ubuntu users – Alvin Aug 28 '14 at 00:10
likely because plpython is not psycopg2, they are very different things – eseglem Oct 17 '14 at 16:07
3

also: question is about CentOS, not about Ubuntu. – GwynBleidD May 04 '15 at 10:26
currently at -4 -- originally found this through google searching about ubuntu so figured I'd help the next guy -- 1 more comment asking to remove and it's gone... or ask to keep it – Alvin Mar 30 '16 at 03:53

Trouble installing psycopg2 on CentOS

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