Installation Troubleshooting

This page serves as a collection for solutions to installation problems people have run into. If none of these work, write to the mailing list where more people can help you. When you have found the solution, please file a ticket to add it to this page.

Contents

• easy_install can’t find one of the packages!
• Error: No local packages or download links found for TurboGears
• Conflict Warning
• Error: Couldn’t find a setup script in TurboGears
• I’m seeing a “File exists” error
• error: invalid Python installation
• gcc failed
• You are required to install SQLObject
• SQLObject is missing, toolbox designer won’t work
• TypeError: iterable argument required
• ZipImportError: not a Zip file
• OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int
• yum: Nothing to do
• Python script was built with Visual Studio 2003

easy_install can’t find one of the packages!

Diagnosis

In order to ensure that the components all work together properly, TurboGears is set up to require specific versions of the component projects and will sometimes rely on unreleased versions. Because of this, easy_install is not always able to find the right package in PyPI. If this is the case, we will upload the specific package to the download page on turbogears.org, where it will be picked up by the standard installation procedure via tgsetup.py.

Solution

Please be sure to follow the download instructions for your platform and use tgsetup.py.

If you must insist on using easy_install directly, try adding the appropriate download URL via the -i option, like this:

easy_install -i http://www.turbogears.org/1.0/downloads/current/index TurboGears

If this does not work for you, use -f instead of -i:

easy_install -f http://www.turbogears.org/1.0/downloads/current/index TurboGears

Please note that this is not supported and several things may go wrong, which you need to fix manually.

Error: No local packages or download links found for TurboGears

Diagnosis

This error most commonly reflects that a firewall is preventing the download of the package or you need to go through a proxy to access the web.

Solution

Here is the suggestion from Phillip Eby:

You’ll need to either find a way to bypass the firewall (e.g. using http://ntlmaps.sf.net/ ), or else manually download all required .egg files from the download page to a temporary directory, and then run:

easy_install -f <dldir> TurboGears

where <dldir> is the directory you downloaded the .egg files to.

If you need to use a proxy to access the web, you can tell easy_install to use the proxy by setting the http_proxy environment variable to point to your proxy server.

Conflict Warning

Diagnosis

TurboGears relies on a new Python packaging format called Python Eggs (you may also see references to the setuptools package, which provides the functionality for handling Eggs). If you have an older, non-egg installation of a package used by TurboGears, easy_install will display a conflict warning.

Solution

In order to get TurboGears running, you need to have the eggs properly installed. There are two options for doing this:

• a non-root installation and
• deletion of the existing package.

A non-root installation preserves all of your existing Python setup, but is more complex. If you have concerns that your system might not like different versions of the libraries, this is the safe route to take. See the page How to Install TurboGears Without root Privileges for more information.

Please see the TurboGears Uninstallation page for information on how to install packages.

Error: Couldn’t find a setup script in TurboGears

Diagnosis

Phillip Eby’s (author of setuptools/easy_install) explanation:

When you get “Couldn’t find a setup script in TurboGears”, it means that you are running in a directory that has a subdirectory called “TurboGears”. Don’t do that, because easy_install sees that you asked for TurboGears, and it sees there’s a TurboGears directory, so it tries to install that. Unless the directory is a TurboGears source checkout, it’s not going to work.

Solution

Change to a different directory, or get rid of the TurboGears subdirectory!

Note, by the way, that Windows and OS X have case-insensitive filesystems, so the directory could be called ‘turbogears’ and it would have the same problem.

If you’re running in a TurboGears checkout with a setup.py present, do this instead:

sudo easy_install --script-dir=/usr/local/bin .

Notice that there’s a “.” instead of “TurboGears” - we’re telling it to install this directory, not a subdirectory.

I’m seeing a “File Exists” error

Diagnosis

On Windows machines, there appears to be a problem when setuptools thinks it needs to overwrite cElementTree.

Solution

The easiest solution to this is to install with the --always-unzip option to tgsetup.py resp. easy_install. You can also fix the immediate error by deleting the Documents and Settings\Your User\ApplicationSettings\Python Eggs directory.

error: invalid Python installation

Problem

I get the following error message in the middle of the installation process:

error: invalid Python installation: unable to open
/usr/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile (No such file or directory)

Diagnosis

On some Linux systems, notably Debian-based systems, you’ll need to have the Python development package (called python2.4-dev or python-devel or similar) installed in order to be able to compile C extensions.

Solution

Install the Pyton development package using your system’s package management. See the detailed installation instructions for your system for the necessary steps.

gcc failed

Problem

The installation fails with an error message containing “gcc failed”.

Diagnosis

The installation procedure tried to install a required package that contains a C-extension and could not find a pre-compiled binary egg for your operating system and/or architecture. It then tried to compile the extension on your system and failed, because no compiler could be found.

Solution

Install a C compiler and a proper build environment. See the detailed installation instructions for your system for the necessary steps.

You are required to install SQLObject

Problem

I have created a new project with tg-admin quickstart. When I try to start it, I get the error message:

You are required to install SQLObject but appear not to have done so.
Please run your projects setup.py or run `easy_install SQLObject`.

Diagnosis

You have created a project that has identity support and therefor needs a database module, which you must install yourself.

Solution

Install the SQLObject package by following the commands given in the error message.

If you did not enable identity and are still getting this error, please refer to bug #1620.

SQLObject is missing, toolbox designer won’t work

Problem

After installing TurboGears you run tg-admin info or tg-admin quickstart and you get this warning:

SQLObject is missing, toolbox designer won't work

Diagnosis

Recent versions of TurboGears do not install an ORM (SQLObject/SQLAlchemy) automatically anymore. The Toolbox Designer will not work without SQLObject installed. If you don’t need it, you can ignore this warning.

Solution

You either have to create a project, which needs SQLObject/SQLAlchemy (for example by enabling identity) and then install it via python setup.py install or python setup.py develop or install SQLObject manually via easy_install:

easy_install -U "SQLObject>=0.8,<=0.10.0"

TypeError: iterable argument required

Problem

File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 580, in proxy_open
    if '@' in host:
TypeError: iterable argument required

Diagnosis

You probably have a syntax error in your proxy URL specification.

Solution

Ray Smith (http://RaymeondSmith.com) writes:

Set the http_proxy environment variable with:

Windows:

$ set HTTP_PROXY=http://user:password@proxy:port

Unix/Mac OS X:

$ export http_proxy="http://user:password@proxy:port

Then try the installation again.

ZipImportError: not a Zip file

Problem

I’m using Windows XP SP2, Python 2.4.4 getting the following error during installation:

C:\>tgsetup.py
[...]
zipimport.ZipImportError: not a Zip file: '[...]\TurboGears-1.0.1-py2.4.egg'

Diagnosis

The TruboGears egg file got corrupted during the download. This may be caused by misbehaving personal firewalls or virus scanners.

Solution

Turn off the personal firewall, e.g. “Norten Internet Security” or similar, and try to install again

OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int

Problem

After installation, when I try to create a new project with tg-admin quickstart, I get:

OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int

Diagnosis

You probably have an outdated or incompatible version of the RuleDispatch package installed.

Solution

Upgrade RuleDispatch with:

$ easy_install -U RuleDispatch

yum: Nothing to do

Problem

I get the following ouput when trying to install TurboGears:

Loading "fastestmirror" plugin
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Loading "skip-broken" plugin
Loading "downloadonly" plugin
Loading "fedorakmod" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
updates        100% |=========================| 1.2 kB    00:00
core           100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
extras         100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Reading repository metadata in from local files
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 1.8 MB    00:20
extras    : ################################################## 5679/5679
Parsing package install arguments
Nothing to do

Why do I get the last message?

Diagnisis

You seem to be using yum to install a TurboGears RPM package. These packages are not supported by the TurboGears project itself.

Solution

Follow the standard installation instructions or ask the provider of the packages you are trying to install for support.

Python script was built with Visual Studio 2003

Problem

Setup script exited with error: Python script was built with
Visual Studio 2003

Diagnosis

None

Solution

Unknown. If you encounter this problem, please post a detailed report to the mailing list.