django can't find new sqlite version? (SQLite 3.8.3 or later is required (found 3.7.17))

Question

I've cloned a django project to a Centos 7 vps and I'm trying to run it now, but I get this error when trying to migrate:

$ python manage.py migrate
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: SQLite 3.8.3 or later is required (found 3.7.17).

When I checked the version for sqlite, it was 3.7.17, so I downloaded the newest version from sqlite website and replaced it with the old one, and now when I version it, it gives:

$ sqlite3 --version
3.27.2 2019-02-25 16:06:06 bd49a8271d650fa89e446b42e513b595a717b9212c91dd384aab871fc1d0f6d7

Still when I try to migrate the project, I get the exact same message as before which means the newer version is not found. I'm new to linux and would appreciate any help.

Answer 1

I got the same error in CentOS 7.6 and Python 3.7.3 versions. I think you are using Django 2.2.* some version. In latest of Django 2.2, they changed the SQLIte version, that cause of your problem.

This is the release notes of Django 2.2 about SQLite.

The minimum supported version of SQLite is increased from 3.7.15 to 3.8.3.

So I found 3 steps to solve this problem,

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• Downgrade Django Version

So you can install latest version of Django 2.1 by using this command, which mean you're going to downgrade your Django version.

pip install Django==2.1.*

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• Upgrading SQLite on CentOS to 3.8.3 or Later

or you can followup below steps as well to keep the latest version Django. I directly get the steps from Upgrading SQLite on CentOS to 3.8.3 or Later article.

You can download the latest sqlite version from here.

wget https://www.sqlite.org/2019/sqlite-autoconf-3280000.tar.gz
tar zxvf sqlite-autoconf-3280000.tar.gz
./configure
make
sudo make install

We've installed to the latest version, but the problem is same. Here,

>>> import sqlite3
>>> sqlite3.sqlite_version
'3.7.17'

In the article, they've mentioned about LD_RUN_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH paths.

Then make sure to compile python again using the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable. It is better to use this variable over LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Using LD_LIBRARY_PATH - whenever python is run it will look for linked libraries with that path. What we want is for the libraries to be cooked into python at link time - compile time.

So based on the article, we can do the similar thing,

cd /opt/Python-x.y.z
LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/lib  ./configure
LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/lib make
LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/lib make altinstall

Then try again,

>>> import sqlite3
>>> sqlite3.sqlite_version
'3.31.1'

Here we go, one thing they've mentioned,

If you do not use LD_RUN_PATH, then you have to make sure that the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable is set to /usr/local/lib for every user that is going to run python - which can be really annoying to do.

---

• testing a Django 2.2 website with SQLite3 on CentOS 7

This is same as the previous one and based on LD_LIBRARY_PATH approach. Here is the steps from the article,

$ wget https://www.sqlite.org/2018/sqlite-autoconf-3240000.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf sqlite-autoconf-3240000.tar.gz
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
$ make
$ sudo make install
$
$ python3.6 -c "import sqlite3; print(sqlite3.sqlite_version)"
3.7.17
$
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
$ python3.6 -c "import sqlite3; print(sqlite3.sqlite_version)"
3.24.0

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If the last two steps didn't work, please comment below with the error you got and I'll find another solution for you.