[SOLVED] Having trouble opening a virtual environment in python3.9

Issue

I have installed python3.9 through apt in my Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS. Then I was trying to create a new virtual environment that runs on 3.9. This is the process I did:

$ python3.9 -m venv /home/user1/py3.9
Error: Command '['/home/user1/py3.9/bin/python3.9', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

To remedy this I tried upgrading pip, which raised an error regarding distutils. Here was the output of that:

$ python3.9 -m pip install --upgrade pip
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 188, in _run_module_as_main
    mod_name, mod_spec, code = _get_module_details(mod_name, _Error)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 147, in _get_module_details
    return _get_module_details(pkg_main_name, error)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.9/runpy.py", line 111, in _get_module_details
    __import__(pkg_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/__init__.py", line 29, in <module>
    from pip.utils import get_installed_distributions, get_prog
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 23, in <module>
    from pip.locations import (
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip/locations.py", line 9, in <module>
    from distutils import sysconfig
ImportError: cannot import name 'sysconfig' from 'distutils' (/usr/lib/python3.9/distutils/__init__.py)

I then installed distutils using the command: sudo apt install python3.9-distutils, which was sucessful and after that I could upgrade pip. But I'm still having the same problem of returned non-zero exit status 1 if I try to create the virtual environment. I'm not sure what I did wrong. But I did install python3.11 in the past and could create virtual environment the same way IIRC. I'm not sure what to do at this point.

Solution

Just installing python isn't enough. You have to to multiple steps:

sudo apt install python3.9
sudo apt install python3.9-distutils
sudo apt install python3.9-venv
sudo apt install python3.9-dev

Hopefully, after that everything will work as intended.

Answered By - ponir

Answer Checked By - Cary Denson (WPSolving Admin)