Native kernel (python2) not available

[majure]

Jupyter notebook has broken for me, despite about a month of smooth use and no major changes to my setup. I have ipython 2.7.6 installed, and it still works. When I run jupyter notebook I get an error saying 'Native kernel (python2) is not available'. I have not found many solutions online that seem applicable to this situation.

[takluyver]

I don't know how you've got there, but that error message means that it can't import ipykernel. If you install that package, it should work.

[majure]

pip install ipykernel

Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): ipykernel in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages Cleaning up...
Pip claims it is already there. Is there an alternate way I should try to install it?

[takluyver]

Maybe it's something that depends on that is missing. In a Python shell, can you try:

from ipykernel.kernelspec import RESOURCES

[majure]

`---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError Traceback (most recent call last)
in ()
----> 1 from ipykernel.kernelspec import RESOURCES

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ipykernel/init.py in ()
1 from ._version import version_info, version, kernel_protocol_version_info, kernel_protocol_version
----> 2 from .connect import *

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ipykernel/connect.py in ()
12
13 from IPython.core.profiledir import ProfileDir
---> 14 from IPython.paths import get_ipython_dir
15 from ipython_genutils.path import filefind
16 from ipython_genutils.py3compat import str_to_bytes

ImportError: No module named paths
`

[takluyver]

That means it's finding an old version of IPython somewhere - try uninstalling and reinstalling the IPython package. If you've installed IPython with something like apt, uninstall that copy.

[majure]

I don't know how that showed up or why it wasn't a problem a few days ago, but that was it. sudo apt-get remove --purge ipython worked.

[takluyver]

I would guess that something got installed using setuptools, it created one of its horrible .pth files and messed up your sys.path, making the system installed IPython take precedence over the newer version you have. That is a long-standing issue with setuptools.

[majure]

Thanks.

[ducha-aiki]

@majure thank you very much!

[borisbolliet]

Thank you @majure, this worked for me too.

[xiaoyun4]

Thank you @majure, it worked for me.

[gregroberts]

If anyone is still having this issue, for me it was solved by simply running

pip install --upgrade ipykernel

without the need for uninstalling ipython entirely

[lifematrix]

@gregroberts it works for me too. Thanks!

[otayeby]

Thank you @gregroberts , I just want to note that this worked for me when I had the same error on PyCharm.