pip install fails with "connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)"

Question

I am very new to Python and trying to > pip install linkchecker on Windows 7. Some notes:

• pip install is failing no matter the package. For example, > pip install scrapy also results in the SSL error.
• Vanilla install of Python 3.4.1 included pip 1.5.6. The first thing I tried to do was install linkchecker. Python 2.7 was already installed, it came with ArcGIS. python and pip were not available from the command line until I installed 3.4.1.
• > pip search linkchecker works. Perhaps that is because pip search does not verify the site's SSL certificate.
• I am in a company network but we do not go through a proxy to reach the Internet.
• Each company computer (including mine) has a Trusted Root Certificate Authority that is used for various reasons including enabling monitoring TLS traffic to https://google.com. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Here are the contents of my pip.log after running pip install linkchecker:

Downloading/unpacking linkchecker
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/: connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/: connection error: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='pypi.python.org', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/ (Caused by <class 'http.client.CannotSendRequest'>: Request-sent)
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
  Cannot fetch index base URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/
  URLs to search for versions for linkchecker:
  * https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
  Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/
  Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/: connection error: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:598)
  Will skip URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/linkchecker/ when looking for download links for linkchecker
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement linkchecker
Cleaning up...
  Removing temporary dir C:\Users\jcook\AppData\Local\Temp\pip_build_jcook...
No distributions at all found for linkchecker
Exception information:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\basecommand.py", line 122, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\commands\install.py", line 278, in run
    requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\req.py", line 1177, in prepare_files
    url = finder.find_requirement(req_to_install, upgrade=self.upgrade)
  File "C:\Python34\lib\site-packages\pip\index.py", line 277, in find_requirement
    raise DistributionNotFound('No distributions at all found for %s' % req)
pip.exceptions.DistributionNotFound: No distributions at all found for linkchecker

Answer 1

-----> pip install gensim config --global http.sslVerify false

Just install any package with the "config --global http.sslVerify false" statement

You can ignore SSL errors by setting pypi.org and files.pythonhosted.org as trusted hosts.

$ pip install --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org <package_name>

Note: Sometime during April 2018, the Python Package Index was migrated from pypi.python.org to pypi.org. This means "trusted-host" commands using the old domain no longer work.

Permanent Fix

Since the release of pip 10.0, you should be able to fix this permanently just by upgrading pip itself:

$ pip install --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org pip setuptools

Or by just reinstalling it to get the latest version:

$ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

(… and then running get-pip.py with the relevant Python interpreter).

pip install <otherpackage> should just work after this. If not, then you will need to do more, as explained below.

---

You may want to add the trusted hosts and proxy to your config file.

pip.ini (Windows) or pip.conf (unix)

[global]
trusted-host = pypi.python.org
               pypi.org
               files.pythonhosted.org

---

Alternate Solutions (Less secure)

Most of the answers could pose a security issue.

Two of the workarounds that help in installing most of the python packages with ease would be:

• Using easy_install: if you are really lazy and don't want to waste much time, use easy_install <package_name>. Note that some packages won't be found or will give small errors.
• Using Wheel: download the Wheel of the python package and use the pip command pip install wheel_package_name.whl to install the package.