Question

I am having trouble with the tutorial, I am stuck here django-admin.py startproject mysite
In the shell I get an error django-admin.py Command no found

I believe I have set the correct path variables? Here is what I have done in the shell:

First I typed in $ python

from there python booted up and I got the >>>
so I typed import django and then django.get_version() and everything works
and I see 1.4.2

Next I exited python and tried to set up the test site from the tutorial.

$ django-admin.py startproject mysite

I get the same error.

django-admin.py Command no found

Where am I going wrong? Do I need to set the path for django as well?

Thanks for your help I tried to be as descriptive as possible.

Answer 1

It sounds like you don’t have django-admin.py in your path.

A guide to solving it is outlined on the Django installation pitfalls page:

SYMPTOM

-bash: django-admin.py: command not found

PROBABLE CAUSE

You don’t have django-admin.py on your command search PATH.

SOLUTION

Link /bin/django-admin.py to whereever on your PATH.

Note that Python on most unix-like system uses /usr/local/lib/python2.X/site-packages/ for 3rd-party packages:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin/django-admin.py

However, Python 2.6 uses /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/ for 3rd-party packages:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin/django-admin.py

You may get a “permission denied” message after this. To change the permissions of the django-admin.py file to be executable do:

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/django-admin.py

If you’ve installed Python 2.6 and made it the default version, you may have to use django-admin-2.6.py startproject mysite instead.

Mind you, this may not be sufficient if /usr/local/bin isn’t in your path. You can check your path easily in your terminal:

$ echo $PATH
/home/sebbe/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

If /usr/local/bin isn’t in your path, you need to add that as well. See Add folder to PATH for an explanation of how to do that.