pip issue installing almost any library

Question

I have a difficult time using pip to install almost anything. I'm new to coding, so I thought maybe this is something I've been doing wrong and have opted out to easy_install to get most of what I needed done, which has generally worked. However, now I'm trying to download the nltk library, and neither is getting the job done.

I tried entering

sudo pip install nltk

but got the following response:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/pip run on Sat May  4 00:15:38 2013
Downloading/unpacking nltk

  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/nltk/
  Could not fetch URL [need more reputation to post link]: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: <urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm>

  Will skip URL [need more reputation to post link]/simple/nltk/ when looking for download links for nltk

  Getting page [need more reputation to post link]/simple/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python. org/simple/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: <urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm>

  Will skip URL [need more reputation to post link] when looking for download links for nltk

  Cannot fetch index base URL [need more reputation to post link]

  URLs to search for versions for nltk:
  * [need more reputation to post link]
  Getting page [need more reputation to post link]
  Could not fetch URL [need more reputation to post link]: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: <urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm>

  Will skip URL [need more reputation to post link] when looking for download links for nltk

  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement nltk

No distributions at all found for nltk

Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 139, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 266, in run
    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/req.py", line 1026, in prepare_files
    url = finder.find_requirement(req_to_install, upgrade=self.upgrade)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/index.py", line 171, in find_requirement
    raise DistributionNotFound('No distributions at all found for %s' % req)
DistributionNotFound: No distributions at all found for nltk

--easy_install installed fragments of the library and the code ran into trouble very quickly upon trying to run it.

Any thoughts on this issue? I'd really appreciate some feedback on how I can either get pip working or something to get around the issue in the meantime.

Answer 1

I solved this issue with the following steps (on sles 11sp2)

zypper remove pip
easy_install pip=1.2.1
pip install --upgrade scons

Here are the same steps in puppet (which should work on all distros)

  package { 'python-pip':
    ensure => absent,
  }
  exec { 'python-pip':
    command  => '/usr/bin/easy_install pip==1.2.1',
    require  => Package['python-pip'],
  }
  package { 'scons': 
    ensure   => latest,
    provider => pip,
    require  => Exec['python-pip'],
  }

Answer 2

If it is only about nltk, I once faced similar problem. Try following guide for installation. Install NLTK

If you are sure it doesn't work with any other module, you may have problem with different versions of Python installed.

Or Give It a Try to see if it says pip is already installed.:

sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev build-essential 

and see if it works.

Answer 3

I had this with PyCharm and upgrading pip to 10.0.1 broke pip with "'main' not found in module" error.

I could solve this problem by installing pip 9.0.3 as seen in some other thread. These are the steps I did:

1. Downloaded 9.0.3 version of pip from https://pypi.org/simple/pip/ (since pip couldn't be used to install it).
2. Install pip 9.0.3 from tar.gz python -m pip install pip-9.0.3.tar.gz

Everything started to work after that.

Answer 4

Solution - Install any package by marking below hosts trusted

• pypi.python.org
• pypi.org
• files.pythonhosted.org

Temporary solution

pip install --trusted-host pypi.python.org --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org {package name}

Permanent solution - Update your PIP(problem with version 9.0.1) to latest.

pip install --trusted-host pypi.python.org --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org pytest-xdist

python -m pip install --trusted-host pypi.python.org --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org --upgrade pip

Answer 5

You're probably seeing this bug; see also here.

The easiest workaround is to downgrade pip to one that doesn't use SSL: easy_install pip==1.2.1. This loses you the security benefit of using SSL. The real solution is to use a Python distribution linked to a more recent SSL library.

Answer 6

I had the same problem. I just updated the python from 2.7.0 to 2.7.15. It solves the problem.

You can download here.