[Fixed]-Error loading MySQLdb module: libmysqlclient.so.20: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

My issue with the same error message was mysql environment not all the way set up. I needed to uninstall MySQL-python; install libmysqlclient-dev; reinstall MySQL-python to rectify the issue.

So the fix was too:

• sudo pip uninstall MySQL-python (uninstall from your package manager of choice)

• sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

• sudo pip install MySQL-python

**I should also mention that I used the –no-cache-dir option with pip install to hit PYPI directly which helped discover the following:

sh: 1: mysql_config: not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/tmp/pip-build-Y7RFpJ/mysql-python/setup.py", line 17, in <module>
    metadata, options = get_config()
  File "/tmp/pip-build-Y7RFpJ/mysql-python/setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
    libs = mysql_config("libs_r")
  File "/tmp/pip-build-Y7RFpJ/mysql-python/setup_posix.py", line 25, in mysql_config
    raise EnvironmentError("%s not found" % (mysql_config.path,))
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

and lead me to here

Using: mysql 5.7, mysql-python 1.2.5, django 1.8.9, ubuntu 16.04

Use the following commands:

pip uninstall mysql-python
pip install mysql-python

In my case it work because it searches from the complied files.

I did fix the same issue via setting below environment variable:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib

In my case the problem was caused by Ubuntu upgrades, so I can’t find libmysqlclient.so.20 in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu.

Solution:

1. Check existance libmysqlclient.so.XX in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu (or similar)
2. Download libmysqlclient.so.XX from Ubuntu website (eg. link for v20)
3. Install lib using dpkg command sudo dpkg -i libmysqlclient(...).deb and sudo apt-get install -f
4. Link lib: ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.XX.so libmysqlclient.XX.so

I had the same problem and I fixed making what the mysqlclient official doc says to install before:
sudo apt-get install python3-dev default-libmysqlclient-dev build-essential

just in case pip uninstall & pip install not working, and you dont want to set specific path to ld_library_path, what I did on my vps:

cd /usr/local/lib
sudo ln -s /path/to/your/libmysqlclient.so.20

in my case my mysql is installed from linuxbrew (there is some reason to install inside home), so I had to navigate there $HOME/.linuxbrew/Cellar/mysql/5.7.18/lib/libmysqlclient.so.20