Pillow: Import Error on El Capitan

[bwghughes]

I have a pyenv virtualenv running 2.7.11. I run the following:

pip install newspaper

Which runs fine.

When I run the REPL I get the following:

Python 2.7.11 (default, Feb 22 2016, 10:04:27)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.53)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import newspaper
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/newspaper/__init__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from .article import Article, ArticleException
  File "/Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/newspaper/article.py", line 12, in <module>
    from . import images
  File "/Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/newspaper/images.py", line 19, in <module>
    from PIL import Image, ImageFile
  File "/Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 66, in <module>
    from PIL import _imaging as core
ImportError: dlopen(/Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so, 2): Symbol not found: _PyUnicodeUCS2_AsLatin1String
  Referenced from: /Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so
  Expected in: flat namespace
 in /Users/ben/.pyenv/versions/burtonmail/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so
>>>

It looks to be a problem with linking PIL references but I'm not sure how to proceed.

[wiredfool]

That looks like the same error that we get if the extension is compiled for a different unicode standard than the python that running it. We're currently checking for _PyUnicodeUCS2_FromString in the import error, not _PyUnicodeUCS2_AsLatin1String here: https://github.com/python-pillow/Pillow/blob/master/PIL/Image.py#L85

What python are you using here, and how did you install pillow?

[eduardolujan]

I have the same problem with OSX 10.11.3 El capitan

ImportError: dlopen(/Users/omm/.pyenv/versions/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so, 2): Symbol not found: _PyUnicodeUCS2_AsLatin1String
Referenced from: /Users/omm/.pyenv/versions/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so
Expected in: flat namespace
in /Users/omm/.pyenv/versions/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so

pip install Pillow==2.5.3

[zhoulijoe]

Encountered the same issue after upgrading pyenv. Seems like the following change might be the reason:

python-build: Compile with --enable-unicode=ucs4 by default for CPython (#257, #542)

My current workaround is to specify ucs2 when using pyenv to install python:

PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS="--enable-unicode=ucs2" pyenv install 2.7.11

Hope this would help.

[wiredfool]

To repeat, the two most important questions are:

• What python are you using? (system, homebrew, python.org, etc)
• How did you install pillow? (from binary wheel, source, etc)

[eduardolujan]

Thank's @zhoulijoe that work for me

$pyenv deactive env
$pyenv uninstall env
$pyenv unistall 2.7.8
$PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS="--enable-unicode=ucs2" pyenv install 2.7.8
$pyenv virtualenv 2.7.8 env

Cheers

[ncoghlan]

Reverting the change to pyenv will get existing built extension modules working again, but won't solve the problem the pyenv change was intended to address: binary compatibility with prebuilt Mac OS X and manylinux1 wheel files published to PyPI.

On Linux, the following command will rebuild all of the modules in an environment (don't run it directly against your system Python!):

$ pip freeze | pip install --ignore-installed --no-use-wheel -r /dev/stdin

For Mac OS X, I don't believe /dev/stdin exists, so pip freeze will need to be written to a file and passed to pip install that way.

[wiredfool]

It doesn't look like this is a Pillow issue as much as a change in pyenv.

[jreiher2003]

python 2.7.11 gives me that error - 2.7.6 doesn't
I upgraded because of this error
InsecurePlatformWarning
/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/requests/packages/urllib3/util/ssl_.py:122: InsecurePlatformWarning: A true SSLContext object is not available. This prevents urllib3 from configuring SSL appropriately and may cause certain SSL connections to fail. You can upgrade to a newer version of Python to solve this. For more information, see https://urllib3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/security.html#insecureplatformwarning. InsecurePlatformWarning

but then i get this error with 2.7.11 v of python

Traceback (most recent call last):
[Sun Dec 04 12:50:04.537094 2016] [:error] [pid 11308:tid 139866024138496] [client 127.0.0.1:43087] from flask_resize import Resize
[Sun Dec 04 12:50:04.537102 2016] [:error] [pid 11308:tid 139866024138496] [client 127.0.0.1:43087] File "/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flask_resize/__init__.py", line 9, in
[Sun Dec 04 12:50:04.537218 2016] [:error] [pid 11308:tid 139866024138496] [client 127.0.0.1:43087] from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont, ImageColor
[Sun Dec 04 12:50:04.537227 2016] [:error] [pid 11308:tid 139866024138496] [client 127.0.0.1:43087] File "/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 67, in
[Sun Dec 04 12:50:04.537644 2016] [:error] [pid 11308:tid 139866024138496] [client 127.0.0.1:43087] from PIL import _imaging as core
[Sun Dec 04 12:50:04.537663 2016] [:error] [pid 11308:tid 139866024138496] [client 127.0.0.1:43087] ImportError: /venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL/_imaging.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS2_AsLatin1String

so I went back to 2.7.6 default version of virtualenv

[wiredfool]

@jreiher2003 Your Pillow binaries are compiled for a different python than you're trying to run with, specifically, there's a mismatch in wide/narrow unicode as mentioned above.

[eduardolujan]

@jreiher2003 install

$pip install requests[security]

or directly

$pip install pyopenssl ndg-httpsclient pyasn1

and follow my steps above .

Regards,
Ed

[jreiher2003]

@eduardolujan
what does this config do?
$PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS="--enable-unicode=ucs2" pyenv install 2.7.8
Should I install these packages pyopenssl ndg-httpsclient pyasn1 in the virtualenv? or globally?

[jreiher2003]

@eduardolujan my bad i wasn't familiar with pyenv. After doing a few test installs, everything works pretty good. no hang ups so far, thanks alot.

[eduardolujan]

@jreiher2003 perfect no problem :) 👍

[jreiher2003]

Welp, after getting to work locally I went for it on the production server and I got some more errors looks like with bcrypt... I had to go back again to 2.7.6 again. Anyone know whats going on here?

[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948607 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] bcrypt is required to use Flask-Bcrypt
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948722 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] mod_wsgi (pid=6703): Target WSGI script '/var/www/peer_flask/peer_flask.wsgi' cannot be loaded as Python module.
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948730 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] mod_wsgi (pid=6703): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/var/www/peer_flask/peer_flask.wsgi'.
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948748 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948763 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] File "/var/www/peer_flask/peer_flask.wsgi", line 28, in
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948814 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] from app import app as application
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948822 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] File "/var/www/peer_flask/peer_flask/app/__init__.py", line 7, in
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948859 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] from flask_bcrypt import Bcrypt
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948866 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] File "/var/www/peer_flask/peer_flask/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/flask_bcrypt.py", line 27, in
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948928 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] raise e
[Mon Dec 12 19:16:03.948943 2016] [:error] [pid 6703:tid 140571484960512] [client 127.0.0.1:46375] ImportError: /var/www/peer_flask/peer_flask/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/_cffi_backend.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS2_FromUnicode

[eduardolujan]

Please check the steps
env is a old environment based in specific version without ucs2 support, in my case is 2.7.8

$pyenv deactive env 
$pyenv uninstall env
$pyenv unistall 2.7.8 # 2.7.8, version without ucs2 support 
$PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS="--enable-unicode=ucs2" pyenv install 2.7.8
$pyenv virtualenv 2.7.8 env # creating a new env with ucs2 support
$pyenv activate env 
$pyenv versions | grep env # This display env as activated environment 

Regards,
Ed