Why do I get a "auth_user does not exist"error when running "migrate" on a newly created django project with "registration redux" app installed?

Question

Given a newly created django project with the following installed apps:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.messages',
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
'registration',
)

When I run ./manage.py migrate for the first time I get the following error:

Operations to perform:
  Synchronize unmigrated apps: staticfiles, messages, registration
  Apply all migrations: sessions, admin, auth, contenttypes
Synchronizing apps without migrations:
  Creating tables...
    Creating table registration_registrationprofile
    Running deferred SQL...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./manage.py", line 10, in <module>
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 338, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 330, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 390, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 441, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/migrate.py", line 179, in handle
    created_models = self.sync_apps(connection, executor.loader.unmigrated_apps)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/migrate.py", line 317, in sync_apps
    cursor.execute(statement)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/utils.py", line 79, in execute
    return super(CursorDebugWrapper, self).execute(sql, params)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/utils.py", line 64, in execute
    return self.cursor.execute(sql, params)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/utils.py", line 97, in __exit__
    six.reraise(dj_exc_type, dj_exc_value, traceback)
  File "/Users/tcosta/Virtualenvs/django_project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/utils.py", line 62, in execute
    return self.cursor.execute(sql)
django.db.utils.ProgrammingError: relation "auth_user" does not exist```

It seems Django is trying to create the registration tables before the user table.

This erros does not happen if I comment the registration app and run migrate and then uncomment the registration app and run migrate again. However, that's not the right way of doing it, right?

Answer 1

After updating my Django version, I got this error and fix as running these two lines:

python manage.py migrate auth
python manage.py migrate

auth_user table inside auth model should run first I guess.