Beaker fails to find Python and Julia installations despite following installation instructions

Question

I have recently installed Beaker Notebook but cannot get it to start Python.

I have an existing installation of Python, which I installed using Anaconda (which is actually recommended for Beaker). I have edited beaker.pref.json to point to my installation (see below), but it just won't start. Jupyter Notebook and other Python implementations work fine, so I know my installation is intact. My beaker.pref.json looks like this following these instructions:

{
  "autocomplete-parameters" : "true",
  "pref-format" : "1",
  "allow-anonymous-usage-tracking" : false,
  "languages" : {
    "IPython" : {
      "path" : "/Users/user/anaconda/bin"
    },
    "Python3" : {
      "path" : "/Users/user/anaconda/bin"
    },
    "Julia" : {
      "path" : "/Applications/Julia-0.6.app/Contents/Resources/julia/bin"
    }
  },
  "edit-mode" : "default"
}

which ipython returns /Users/user/anaconda/bin/ipython

which python3 returns /Users/user/anaconda/bin/python3

Here is what the error message looks like:

I cannot seem to figure out what I am doing wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Jupyter notebook works just fine for Python and Julia alike, so I don't think there's anything wrong with these installations per se.

EDIT: The problems with Python may be resolved by installing Python using Anaconda. However, for Julia this does not seem to be so straightforward. Despite pointing Beaker to the location of the Julia executables, it fails to start the kernel.

Answer 1

On the link that you provide, the author recommends to use this:

"path": "/Users/user/anaconda/envs/py3k/bin"

as your Python3 path.

EDIT 1:

Then you can try and install python3 and IPython manually and link those to the preferences json.

EDIT 2:

In this issue the problem was resolved by the following:

Looks like it's caused by a perhaps previous ipkernel install for a homebrew installed python. Following command fixed the problem:

python -m ipykernel install --user Installed kernelspec python2 in
/Users/admin/Library/Jupyter/kernels/python2