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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T20:28:14+00:00

I’m trying to run python setup.py a small script on a Linode instance where

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I’m trying to run python setup.py a small script on a Linode instance where I’m running Flask + sqlalchemy (mysql).

#filename - setup.py
from daaru import db

def init_db():
    db.drop_all()
    db.create_all()

init_db()

This is the error I’m getting – 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 21, in <module>
    init_db()
  File "setup.py", line 9, in init_db
    db.drop_all()
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flask_sqlalchemy.py", line 830, in drop_all
    self._execute_for_all_tables(app, bind, 'drop_all')
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flask_sqlalchemy.py", line 814, in _execute_for_all_tables
    op(bind=self.get_engine(app, bind), tables=tables)
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flask_sqlalchemy.py", line 763, in get_engine
    return connector.get_engine()
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flask_sqlalchemy.py", line 443, in get_engine
    self._engine = rv = sqlalchemy.create_engine(info, **options)
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/__init__.py", line 338, in create_engine
    return strategy.create(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/engine/strategies.py", line 64, in create
    dbapi = dialect_cls.dbapi(**dbapi_args)
  File "/home/captain/public/daaru/v1/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/sqlalchemy/connectors/mysqldb.py", line 52, in dbapi
    return __import__('MySQLdb')
ImportError: No module named MySQLdb

The funny part is that when I log into the server, activate the virtual env (named v1), and run init_db in ipython everything works as expected. But when I run it as a script, it gives me an ImportError for the module named MySQLdb. MySQLdb has a systemwide installation using apt-get install python-mysqldb as this package is not available via pip.

What am I doing wrong here?

Running pip freeze on the server shows me this:

Flask==0.9
Flask-SQLAlchemy==0.16
Jinja2==2.6
SQLAlchemy==0.7.9
Werkzeug==0.8.3
argparse==1.2.1
wsgiref==0.1.2

Is the error coming because mysqldb package is not found in the venv? Why isn’t then the systemwide installation of that package being used?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I used this blog post to install mysql-python in my venv. Everything works likes a charm now. Thanks.
    I’ve also added a fabfile to automate deployment –

    from fabric.api import *

env.user = "host"
env.hosts = ["hostname"]
env.directory = "/home/captain/public/daaru"
env.activate = "source /home/captain/public/daaru/v1/bin/activate"

def deploy():
    with cd(env.directory):
        run("git pull")
        run("sudo service apache2 reload")

def virtualenv(command):
    with cd(env.directory), prefix(env.activate):
        run(command)

def populate_db():
    virtualenv("python setup.py")

def freeze():
    """ command for testing virtualenv """
    virtualenv("pip freeze")
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