Problems installing MySQLdb on Windows [newbie]

[John Machin]

Alex Meier wrote:
> hi, all!
>
> this is my first contact with python, I installed python 2.4 (on
Win2k)
> and unzipped the MySQLdb package "MySQL-Python 1.0.0 for win32" into
> Lib/site-packages.
>
> However, when I try to import the MySQLdb package, I am faced with
the
> error message "DLL load failed", in more detail:
>

(1) RTFHomePage (FIRST SENTENCE):
"""MySQL versions 3.22, 3.23 and 4.0; and Python versions 1.5.2-2.3 are
supported. """

Background: A .pyd has to be linked against a specific PythonXY.dll;
see point (4) below.

(2) A package which doesn't provide an installer but merely invites you
to unzip everything into .../lib/site-packages is a bit dodgy. If you
had have followed the instructions blindly, you would have ended up
with a directory called mysql-python-1.0.0.win32-py2.3 [eeee, look,
"2.3"] as a child of site-packages.

(3) "Lib" versus "lib" is not the problem; if you examine your
traceback, you will see that it found "Lib" even though "lib" was
specified. Windows file names are not case-sensitive. However there can
be Python-imposed problems which can be overcome (in the remote event
that you meet these problems) by using the PYTHONCASEOK environment
veriable.

(4) Why you are getting the "DLL not found" message is beyond me, given
your description of what you've done. Perhaps the picture is being
obscured by your using "pyshell". What you should have got is something
like this [I've extracted _mysql.pyd into my junk directory]:

C:\junk>python
Python 2.4 (#60, Nov 30 2004, 11:49:19) [MSC v.1310 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import _mysql
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: Module use of python23.dll conflicts with this version of
Python.
>>>

(5) But the _mysql.pyd appears to be a bit suspect anyway:

C:\junk>\python23\python
Python 2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)]
on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import _mysql
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: _mysql: init failed
>>>

(6) I suggest that you contact the package maintainer.