NameError: name '_mysql' is not defined after setting change to mysql

Question

I have a running Django blog with sqlite3 db at my local machine. What I want is to

1. convert sqlite3 db to mysql db
2. change Django settings.py file to serve MySQL db

Before I ran into the first step, I jumped into the second first. I followed this web page (on MacOS). I created databases called djangolocaldb on root user and have those infos in /etc/mysql/my.cnf like this:

# /etc/mysql/my.cnf

[client]
database=djangolocaldb
user=root
password=ROOTPASSWORD
default-character-set=utf8

Of course I created db, but not table within it.

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| djangolocaldb      |
| employees          |
| information_schema |
| mydatabase         |
| mysql              |
| performance_schema |
| sys                |
+--------------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

I changed settings.py like this as the web page suggested. Here's how:

# settings.py

...

# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/settings/#databases

DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
            #'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
            'OPTIONS' : {
                'read_default_file': '/etc/mysql/my.cnf',
                }
            }
        }

...

Now, when I run python manage.py runserver with my venv activated, I got a brutal traceback like this(I ran python manage.py migrate first, and the traceback looked almost the same anyway):

(.venv) ➜  django-local-blog git:(master) ✗ python manage.py runserver
Watching for file changes with StatReloader
Exception in thread django-main-thread:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 18, in <module>
    from . import _mysql
ImportError: dlopen(/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/_mysql.cpython-37m-darwin.so, 2): Library not loaded: @rpath/libmysqlclient.21.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/_mysql.cpython-37m-darwin.so
  Reason: image not found

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/.pyenv/versions/3.7.6/lib/python3.7/threading.py", line 926, in _bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/.pyenv/versions/3.7.6/lib/python3.7/threading.py", line 870, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/utils/autoreload.py", line 53, in wrapper
    fn(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/runserver.py", line 109, in inner_run
    autoreload.raise_last_exception()
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/utils/autoreload.py", line 76, in raise_last_exception
    raise _exception[1]
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 357, in execute
    autoreload.check_errors(django.setup)()
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/utils/autoreload.py", line 53, in wrapper
    fn(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/__init__.py", line 24, in setup
    apps.populate(settings.INSTALLED_APPS)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/apps/registry.py", line 114, in populate
    app_config.import_models()
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/apps/config.py", line 211, in import_models
    self.models_module = import_module(models_module_name)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/.pyenv/versions/3.7.6/lib/python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 967, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 677, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap_external>", line 728, in exec_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 219, in _call_with_frames_removed
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/models.py", line 2, in <module>
    from django.contrib.auth.base_user import AbstractBaseUser, BaseUserManager
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/base_user.py", line 47, in <module>
    class AbstractBaseUser(models.Model):
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 121, in __new__
    new_class.add_to_class('_meta', Options(meta, app_label))
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 325, in add_to_class
    value.contribute_to_class(cls, name)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/models/options.py", line 208, in contribute_to_class
    self.db_table = truncate_name(self.db_table, connection.ops.max_name_length())
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/__init__.py", line 28, in __getattr__
    return getattr(connections[DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS], item)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/utils.py", line 207, in __getitem__
    backend = load_backend(db['ENGINE'])
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/utils.py", line 111, in load_backend
    return import_module('%s.base' % backend_name)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/.pyenv/versions/3.7.6/lib/python3.7/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py", line 16, in <module>
    import MySQLdb as Database
  File "/Users/gwanghyeongim/Documents/py/coreyMS_pj/django-local-blog/.venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 24, in <module>
    version_info, _mysql.version_info, _mysql.__file__
NameError: name '_mysql' is not defined

So this NameError: name '_mysql' is not defined is the problem. I installed mysqlclient before, changed settings.py, made db in mysql, but none of the steps made it any helpful yet.

And I noticed that even I changed my settings.py back to sqlite3, my blog spit the same _mysql not defined error. So I ended up reverting my commit and now I'm back to sqlite3 (at least my blog is running with it).

I'm guessing it could be that I didn't convert data first, but I'm not 100% sure of it.

Any suggestion would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

So, I'm answering my own question. Since my blog has database, I gave it a shot to make another project without db, start fresh.

What I noticed was there's a problem importing MySQLdb module(sub module of mysqlclient) with this traceback: Library not loaded: @rpath/libmysqlclient.21.dylib.

For browsing a few hours I realised that for some reason Mac security setting keeps this from being imported properly.

On mysqlclient library github I found one issue reporting the same as mine. It suggests I run cp -r /usr/local/mysql/lib/* /usr/local/lib/. After this I set settings.py for django.db.backends.mysql, ran python manage.py migrate and it worked. So for empty database, this could be a solution. Still struggling with database one though.

I use

• MacOS Catalina 10.15.6
• pyenv

Answer 2

This did the job for me! Just install libmysqlclient-dev (sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev for Ubuntu). Sometimes, the lib files simply are missing even if you just installed mysql. :)

Answer 3

this worked for me:

add this to PATH:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/mysql/lib:$PATH"