ImportError: No module named django.core.management when using manage.py

Question

I'm trying to run python manage.py runserver on a Django application I have and I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "manage.py", line 8, in <module>
 from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
ImportError: No module named django.core.management

Here is the output of pip freeze | grep -i django to show I do in fact have Django installed:

Django==1.6.5
django-cached-authentication-middleware==0.2.0
django-cors-headers==1.1.0
django-htmlmin==0.7.0
django-static-precompiler==0.9
djangorestframework==2.3.14

Also, trying to run /usr/local/bin/python2.7 manage.py runserver yields the same error.

Answer 1

Possible issues that may cause your problem:

1. PYTHONPATH is not well configured, to configure it you should do:

   export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages
   

2. You forgot the line #!/usr/bin/env python at the beginning of manage.py

3. If you're working on virtualenv you forgot to activate the virtual env to execute manage.py commands (You may have installed Django on your system but not on your virtualenv)

   source path/to/your/virtualenv/bin/activate
   

   or

   workon env_name
   

4. You have Python 2.7 and Python 3.4 messing with the package

5. You're using a very old Python 2.4 and you should tell the system to use your Python 2.7 with:

   alias python=python2.7
   

Some times reinstalling/upgrading Django fix some of those issues.

You may want to execute

python -c "import django; print(django.get_version())"

to check if Django is installed on your PC or your virtualenv if you're using one

You can find some other solutions in other similar questions:

• Django import error
• Django uwsgi error
• Django module error