Python can't find module when started with sudo

Question

I've got a script that uses the Google Assistant Library and has to import some modules from there. I figured out this only works in a Python Virtual Environment, which is really strange. In the same folder I've got a script which uses the GPIO pins and has to use root. They interact with each other, so when I start the GPIO script, the Assistant script is also started. But for some reason the modules in there can't import when the script is started with root. Does anybody know something about this?

Answer 1

Normally you can active a virtual env and use the interpreter inside the env to run your script. But it is not necessary.

Suppose you have a virtual env under the path /path-to-env/env the script you want to run example.py is under the path /path-to-script/example.py

you can already run this example.py like

sudo /path-to-env/env/bin/python /path-to-script/example.py

Answer 2

not 100% sure but have you tried:

sudo -E python myScriptName.py

_{As mentioned here}

Answer 3

Try to install the module using sudo.

I had the same problem with the module 'reportlab' from python. I realized that I had installed pip (the installer manager for reportlab) without sudo command.

The problem is that the package (pip and reportlab) has been installed as user and not as root, so when you try to use sudo, it does not recognize the system path to reportlab because you never installed in the first place, only for the user!

I recommend install pip and module with sudo always:

For python 2:

$ sudo add-apt-repository universe
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py --output get-pip.py
$ sudo python2 get-pip.py
$ sudo pip install google-assistant-library

For python 3 (from Docs Google assistant library):

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-venv
$ sudo python3 -m venv env
$ sudo env/bin/python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools
$ sudo source env/bin/activate
$ sudo python -m pip install --upgrade google-assistant-library

Hope this helps! Regards!