ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_gdal' in Ubuntu 20.04 and Python 3.8

Question

I know that this has been asked multiple times, but I still arrive at the ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_gdal' error in my Ubuntu 20.04 workstation and with Python 3.8 under Anaconda. The following are suggestions that I have tried:

1. Install GDAL with conda install -c conda-forge gdal - it seemed to successfully install at first, but upon importing osgeo into Python, I get the ModuleNotFoundError;
2. Install GDAL through pip - this does not succeed in installing GDAL. I receive an error indicating that the wheel file cannot be built;
3. Install pygdal either through pip or conda (https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/356609/208986) - this has the same result as (1). I even downgraded my Python to 3.6 to install it through conda, but to no success;
4. https://stackoverflow.com/a/72413306/14081094 - I cannot successfully complete these steps due to GDAL not installing through pip (see 2);
5. https://stackoverflow.com/a/72887401/14081094, https://stackoverflow.com/a/41613466/14081094 - it was able to successfully install GDAL in Ubuntu 20.04, but unable to install GDAL in Python, again, through pip or conda (see 1 and 2);

Weirdly enough, I can import GDAL through the base environment of Anaconda with no errors (using any of the steps), however when I try to import it through a virtual environment, the error occurs.

Answer 1

Works for me on Windows with the commands copied from https://gist.github.com/ThomasG77/40a9f033131c9b49fe70b22a5f9c701a

conda create --name gdaltest python=3.8
conda activate gdaltest
conda install gdal libgdal

python
>>> from osgeo import gdal
>>> gdal.VersionInfo()
'3060200'

Article https://opensourceoptions.com/blog/how-to-install-gdal-with-anaconda/ has advice for troubleshooting.

EDIT

It may be necessary to install also krb5, see https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/440118

conda install krb5

Answer 2

Not the best solution, but suffices for me on a Mac M1: pinning gdal<3.6 in my Conda environment made things work for me again.

After some CONDA_SUBDIR=osx-64 micromamba create --prefix ./venv -f conda_environment.yml I then see _gdal.py exists:

ls -l ./venv/**/_gdal.py
-rw-rw-r--  2 arjan  staff  420 Sep  1  2021 ./venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/osgeo/_gdal.py

Without that pin, which in my project got me GDAL 3.6.x today (which is not the latest, probably due to a Python 3.8 dependency in my project), I got the ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_gdal' and no file _gdal.py exists then. That’s all I know; hoping it may help someone investigating for a proper solution if things suddenly break.

Answer 3

This method works for me in python 3.11 First, download the appropriate .whl file (in my case GDAL-3.4.3-cp311-cp311-win_amd64.whl since I use python 3.11) from

https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#gdal

then, install the file from command prompt, as can be seen in

https://opensourceoptions.com/how-to-install-gdal-for-python-with-pip-on-windows/

Answer 4

I had a similar situation (on Mac). While ogrmerge.py was complaining about ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_gdal', ogr2ogr returned:

dyld[56812]: Library not loaded: /opt/homebrew/opt/x265/lib/libx265.199.dylib
  Referenced from: <6162BB8E-91FB-38CF-98D7-5C1E2DEE6E55> /opt/homebrew/Cellar/libheif/1.17.6/lib/libheif.1.17.6.dylib
  Reason: tried: '/opt/homebrew/opt/x265/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/opt/homebrew/opt/x265/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/opt/homebrew/opt/x265/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache), '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/x265/3.6/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/System/Volumes/Preboot/Cryptexes/OS/opt/homebrew/Cellar/x265/3.6/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/opt/homebrew/Cellar/x265/3.6/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/local/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file), '/usr/lib/libx265.199.dylib' (no such file, not in dyld cache)
    zsh: abort      ogr2ogr

Got both fixed by:

brew reinstall libheif

Based on this.