Numpy - ImportError: cannot import name _distributor_init

Question

I have been using matplotlib from python and the spyder ide to create some figures for a publication. It always worked but even after years of using linux the whole thing for me still is a black box.

Yesterday I tried to run another application and it was complaining that numpy and cv2 were not installed (I don't know why as they were installed). I think I tried to upgrade those two packages by calling sudo pip install [package_name] --upgrade. End of the story - nothing works. At the moment my goal is just to get spyder running so that I can create figures again.

When I want to import scipy.io (import scipy.io as sio`) I just get a bunch of errors.

runfile('/home/test/Desktop/python_test.py', wdir='/home/test/Desktop') 
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "<ipython-input-1-83166c6df179>", line 1, in <module>
runfile('/home/test/Desktop/python_test.py', wdir='/home/test/Desktop')

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/spyder/utils/site/sitecustomize.py", line 705, in runfile
execfile(filename, namespace)

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/spyder/utils/site/sitecustomize.py", line 94, in execfile
builtins.execfile(filename, *where)

File "/home/test/Desktop/python_test.py", line 1, in <module>
import scipy as sio # to import matlab files

File "/home/test/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/scipy/__init__.py", line 62, in <module>
from numpy import show_config as show_numpy_config

File "/home/test/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/__init__.py", line 140, in <module>
from . import _distributor_init

ImportError: cannot import name _distributor_init

What do I need to do to fix this?

Currently, I have the following setup:

Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Spyder 3.2.6

test@test:~$ python --version
Python 2.7.15rc1

test@test:~$ pip --version
pip 9.0.1 from /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (python 2.7)

test@test:~$ pip install scipy
Collecting scipy ... Successfully installed numpy-1.16.2 scipy-1.2.1

test@test:~$ sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-scipy
python-numpy is already the newest version (1:1.13.3-2ubuntu1).
python-scipy is already the newest version (0.19.1-2ubuntu1).

Answer 1

In my case I found the following solution for my problem:

I ran my python script ("import numpy as np") directly in the terminal:

test@test:~/Desktop$ python python_test.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "python_test.py", line 1, in <module>
import numpy as np
File "/home/test/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/__init__.py", line 142, in <module>
from . import core
File "/home/test/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/__init__.py", line 91, in <module>
raise ImportError(msg.format(path))
ImportError: Something is wrong with the numpy installation. While importing we detected an older version of numpy in ['/home/test/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy']. One method of fixing this is to repeatedly uninstall numpy until none is found, then reinstall this version.

The error in the last line is more descriptive than the one I got in Spyder. I just uninstalled numpy via pip ("pip uninstall numpy") and it removed the 1.16.2 version. Now only the 1.13.3 version is left and it seems to work.