Cannot run django-admin.py startproject in virtual environment, or at all, in Ubuntu

Question

I am trying to create a project in a virtual environment in Ubuntu 16.04

I am using Python 3.6

What I do so far is

sudo bash

cd Desktop/DamLevels-course2/Damlevels2/

source venv2/bin/activate 

django-admin.py startproject dams 

The error says: ImportError: No module named 'secrets'

I have checked the list of modules in python and secrets is there, but when I try to import to the virtual environment I get an error saying: import: not authorized 'secrets' @ error/constitute.c/WriteImage/1028

I tried adding the shebang line as well (#;/usr/bin/env) but that didn't seem to work. running the startproject line again results in the same error message as before.

I am very new to all of this, so I would appreciate fairly simple help.

Answer 1

Ok I think I got it to work. Instead of using

django-admin.py startproject *name*

i used

django-admin startproject *name*

First I had to install python-django

Thanks for your help everyone!

Answer 2

The Django documentation states the command to create a new project is:

$ django-admin startproject mysite

So to create your project replace "mysite" with "dams", or whatever your project name will be. For example:

$ django-admin startproject dams

Also, perhaps it was a typo but the package that should be installed is "python3-django", not "python-django". This command will install python3-django.

$ sudo apt-get install python3-django

The Django documentation also references potential problems running django-admin . Here is an excerpt mentioning issues between django-admin and django-admin.py.

Problems running django-admin

command not found: django-admin

django-admin should be on your system path if you installed Django via pip. If it's not on your path, you can find it in "site-packages/django/bin", where site-packages is a directory within your Python installation. Consider symlinking to django-admin from some place on your path, such as /usr/local/bin.

If django-admin doesn't work but django-admin.py does, you're probably using a version of Django that doesn't match the version of this documentation. django-admin is new in Django 1.7.