ubuntu-python-easy_install-pil-does-not-install-zlib-support

Ubuntu Python easy_install PIL does not install zlib or png support

I was getting the following error even though the zlib dev libraries were already installed correctly.

.. code-block:: python

*** TKINTER support not available *** JPEG support not available *** ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support not available *** FREETYPE2 support not available *** LITTLECMS support not available ——————————————————————– To add a missing option, make sure you have the required library, and set the corresponding ROOT variable in the setup.py script.

Apparently PIL setup.py doesn’t know how to find libz.so.

PIL expects libz.so to be located in /usr/lib not /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so

I fixed this issue by building a link to were PIL setup.py looks and where the library really exists!

How to fix

1. Find the location of your systems libz.so

.. code-block:: bash

find . -name libz.so

2. Create a soft link from libz.so to /usr/lib

   Ubuntu 32bit:

   .. code-block:: bash

   sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib

   Ubuntu 64bit:

   .. code-block:: bash

   sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib

Notes

You might need to delete the PIL egg from your pythons site-packages directory and attempt to re-install the package

ubuntu

.. code-block:: bash

sudo apt-get build-dep python-imaging