Python ImportError: no module named os

Question

Trying to upgrade matplotlib as in this post, I ran

export PYTHONHOME=/usr/lib/python2.7/
sudo easy_install -U distribute
sudo pip install --upgrade matplotlib
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Answer 1

The issue was changing PYTHONHOME, which could not find any modules because I have python running out of a user directory /Users/alavin89/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages. Check the python path by running echo $PYTHONPATH. The fix:

unset PYTHONHOME
sudo pip uninstall matplotlib
pip uninstall matplotlib
pip install --user matplotlib

Note: running uninstall again w/o sudo is to double-check it worked properly.