Tango with Django: no module named _sqlite3

Question

I know there are already many people with this problem, but I've spent the last three hours going over every link I can find and I haven't been able to find a solution that works for me. I'm embarrassed to have to make this thread but I have no other option.

I've been doing Django with Tango, everything was running very smoothly until I got to this section: http://www.tangowithdjango.com/book/chapters/models.html#creating-and-synchronising-the-database

When doing the syncdb command, Python didn't recognize sqlite3. So I decided to verify this with a simple import test:

rob@rob-Latitude-E5400:~/code/tango_with_django_project$ python
Python 2.7.5 (default, Sep 21 2014, 16:23:05) 
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sqlite3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/rob/.pythonbrew/pythons/Python-2.7.5/lib/python2.7/sqlite3/__init__.py", line 24, in <module>
    from dbapi2 import *
  File "/home/rob/.pythonbrew/pythons/Python-2.7.5/lib/python2.7/sqlite3/dbapi2.py", line 27, in <module>
    from _sqlite3 import *
ImportError: No module named _sqlite3
>>> 

Lots of people had this same problem online. This guy

https://stackoverflow.com/a/1210746/694855

Gave some advice to find the _sqlite3.so, and put the directory in the PYTHONPATH. I ran the syncdb command again, and got this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./manage.py", line 10, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 453, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 392, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 263, in fetch_command
    app_name = get_commands()[subcommand]
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 109, in get_commands
    apps = settings.INSTALLED_APPS
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 53, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 49, in _setup
    self._configure_logging()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 71, in _configure_logging
    from django.utils.log import DEFAULT_LOGGING
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/utils/log.py", line 6, in <module>
    from django.views.debug import ExceptionReporter, get_exception_reporter_filter
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/views/debug.py", line 11, in <module>
    from django.http import (HttpResponse, HttpResponseServerError,
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/http/__init__.py", line 2, in <module>
    from django.http.request import (HttpRequest, QueryDict, UnreadablePostError,
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/http/request.py", line 8, in <module>
    from io import BytesIO
  File "/home/rob/.pythonbrew/pythons/Python-2.7.5/lib/python2.7/io.py", line 51, in <module>
    import _io
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_io.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS4_EncodeUTF32

Now I'm stuck. I Googled the last error and couldn't find much. Something about how my Python was compiled with a different Unicode. That doesn't tell me much on how to fix the problem though.

Thanks for reading and the help.

Answer 1

Fixed. I saw this response:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/19748196/694855

However, when I ran pip install pysqlite I received this:

[snipped]
gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O2 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC -DMODULE_NAME="pysqlite2.dbapi2" -DSQLITE_OMIT_LOAD_EXTENSION=1 -I/usr/include/python2.7 -c src/module.c -o build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.7/src/module.o

In file included from src/module.c:24:0:

src/connection.h:26:20: fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory

compilation terminated.

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
[snipped]

It turns out that I didn't have the Python development files installed. I figured this out from this post: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/apparent-gcc-error-when-building-pysqlite-697318/#post3408711

So I ran: sudo apt-get install python-dev

Then I could successfully run: pip install pysqlite

Finally, now when I run the command from the Django tutorial: ./manage.py syncdb

I get the correct output. I hope this helps someone else, since this solution was convoluted and quite hard to find online.