cqlsh does not work for Cassandra 3.11X and Python 2.7.X

Question

When i Install Cassandra 3.11X and Python 2.7.X in Debian 8.8, the Cqlsh does not start. I get the following error.

debian@vm-184:/opt/apache-cassandra-3.10/bin$ ./cqlsh

Python Cassandra driver not installed, or not on PYTHONPATH. You might try "pip install cassandra-driver".

Python: /usr/local/bin/python
Module load path: ['/opt/apache-cassandra-3.10/bin/../lib/six-1.7.3-py2.py3-none-any.zip', '/opt/apache-cassandra-3.10/bin/../lib/futures-2.1.6-py2.py3-none-any.zip', '/opt/apache-cassandra-3.10/bin/../lib/cassandra-driver-internal-only-3.7.0.post0-2481531.zip/cassandra-driver-3.7.0.post0-2481531', '/opt/apache-cassandra-3.10/bin', '/usr/local/lib/python27.zip', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/plat-linux2', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-tk', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-old', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

Error: can't decompress data; zlib not available

How do we resolve this

Answer 1

On RedHat 7x - Install the following packages:

# yum install zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel

Then...

# vi .../Python-2.7.13/Modules/Setup

uncomment the line: ...

zlib zlibmodule.c -I$(prefix)/include -L$(exec_prefix)/lib -lz

AND (re-)compile python source:

# cd .../Python-2.7.13/Modules/

# ./configure

# make

# make install

Answer 2

Error: can't decompress data; zlib not available

Is the zlib library install? please install zlib first.

Answer 3

This issue generally comes when your machine has Python 2.6 or below. Check the answer over here cassandra 2.2 CQl Shell supports python 2.7 on how to start cqlsh using python 2.7

Quoting - "Depending on your distribution and its version you cannot change the default python version of the system without breaking the system." I would recommend you to choose Debian version that uses Python2.7x natively.