[Fixed]-Python easy_install fails with SSL certificate error for all packages

I found this page after looking for a solution to this problem. In case someone else has similar problem, the solution I found is:

At the start of the setuptools/ssl_support.py file (which is used by easy_install, and is inside the egg file: ./lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-3.5.1-py2.7.egg), the certificate bundles files are hard-coded in cert_paths variable:

cert_paths = """
/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
/usr/share/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
/usr/local/share/certs/ca-root.crt
...etc..
"""

easy_install will use the first file that exists from this list, as it calls find_ca_bundle. If certificates in this cert bundle file are out of date, then easy_install will fail with this SSL error. So need to either update the certificate file or change the cert_paths in this ssl_support.py file, to point to a local up-to-date certs bundle file.

I have seen this problem in a specific environment: Mac OS X with macports, installing packages in user’s local path. The solution was to install the certificates from curl:

port install curl-ca-bundle

Btw, until you don’t have the ceritificates, most of the port, easy_install and pip commands will fail because the ssl error.

Try installing pip to do python package installation instead.

You can find the documentation to quick install it and use it here. It’s generally a lot better than easy_install.

It also uses SSL by default, and with Requests’ certificate stack (derived from mozilla).

You can also find a lot of information on working with python packages in general on the Python Packaging User Guide.