Unable to import matplotlib.pyplot

Question

I have installed python 2.7.10 in CentOS 6.5. Then I installed matplotlib using pip. However, I am getting the following error when trying to import matplotlib.pyplot.

import matplotlib.pyplot
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/pyplot.py", line 115, in <module>
    _backend_mod, new_figure_manager, draw_if_interactive, _show = pylab_setup()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/__init__.py", line 32, in pylab_setup
    globals(),locals(),[backend_name],0)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_tkagg.py", line 6, in <module>
    from six.moves import tkinter as Tk
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/six.py", line 203, in load_module
    mod = mod._resolve()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/six.py", line 115, in _resolve
    return _import_module(self.mod)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/six.py", line 82, in _import_module
    __import__(name)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 39, in <module>
    import _tkinter # If this fails your Python may not be configured for Tk
ImportError: No module named _tkinter

tkinter seems to be installed.
"Package tkinter-2.6.6-66.el6_8.x86_64 already installed and latest version"

I have _tkinter.so module in python2.6/lib-dynload, but nothing related to tkinter under python2.7/lib-dynload.

/usr/lib64/python2.6/lib-dynload/_tkinter.so
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-tk/test/test_tkinter

Also, I verified sys.path in python to get the following:

Python 2.7.10 (default, Jun  1 2017, 18:51:46)
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-18)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> print '\n'.join(sys.path)

/usr/local/lib/python27.zip  
/usr/local/lib/python2.7  
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/plat-linux2  
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-tk
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-old  
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload  
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages

Answer 1

This may be a problem with your python library path. Check to see where tkinter is installed, and make sure that you have that available to your Python interpreter. Can you import anything else from tkinter ?

Answer 2

Try to install tkinter as they said ”no module named _tkinter“. You can do so with that command:

sudo apt-get install python-tk