Error running basic tensorflow example

Question

I have just reinstalled latest tensorflow on ubuntu:

$ sudo pip install --upgrade https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/linux/cpu/tensorflow-0.7.1-cp27-none-linux_x86_64.whl
[sudo] password for ubuntu: 
The directory '/home/ubuntu/.cache/pip/http' or its parent directory is not owned by the current user and the cache has been disabled. Please check the permissions and owner of that directory. If executing pip with sudo, you may want sudo's -H flag.
The directory '/home/ubuntu/.cache/pip' or its parent directory is not owned by the current user and caching wheels has been disabled. check the permissions and owner of that directory. If executing pip with sudo, you may want sudo's -H flag.
Collecting tensorflow==0.7.1 from https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/linux/cpu/tensorflow-0.7.1-cp27-none-linux_x86_64.whl
  Downloading https://storage.googleapis.com/tensorflow/linux/cpu/tensorflow-0.7.1-cp27-none-linux_x86_64.whl (13.8MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 13.8MB 32kB/s 
Requirement already up-to-date: six>=1.10.0 in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (from tensorflow==0.7.1)
Requirement already up-to-date: protobuf==3.0.0b2 in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (from tensorflow==0.7.1)
Requirement already up-to-date: wheel in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (from tensorflow==0.7.1)
Requirement already up-to-date: numpy>=1.8.2 in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (from tensorflow==0.7.1)
Requirement already up-to-date: setuptools in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages (from protobuf==3.0.0b2->tensorflow==0.7.1)
Installing collected packages: tensorflow
  Found existing installation: tensorflow 0.7.1
    Uninstalling tensorflow-0.7.1:
      Successfully uninstalled tensorflow-0.7.1
Successfully installed tensorflow-0.7.1

When following the directions to test it fails with cannot import name pywrap_tensorflow:

$ ipython

/git/tensorflow/tensorflow/__init__.py in <module>()
     21 from __future__ import print_function
     22 
---> 23 from tensorflow.python import *

/git/tensorflow/tensorflow/python/__init__.py in <module>()
     43 _default_dlopen_flags = sys.getdlopenflags()
     44 sys.setdlopenflags(_default_dlopen_flags | ctypes.RTLD_GLOBAL)
---> 45 from tensorflow.python import pywrap_tensorflow
     46 sys.setdlopenflags(_default_dlopen_flags)
     47 

ImportError: cannot import name pywrap_tensorflow

Is there an additional change needed to my python or ubuntu/bash environment?

Answer 1

From the path in your stack trace (/git/tensorflow/tensorflow/…), it looks like your Python path may be loading the tensorflow libraries from the source directory, rather than the version that you have installed. As a result, it is unable to find the (compiled) pywrap_tensorflow library, which is installed in a different directory.

A common solution is to cd out of the /git/tensorflow directory before starting python or ipython.