pip install mysql-python fails with EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found

It seems mysql_config is missing on your system or the installer could not find it. Be sure mysql_config is really installed.

For example on Debian/Ubuntu you must install the package:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

Maybe the mysql_config is not in your path, it will be the case when you compile by yourself the mysql suite.

Update: For recent versions of debian/ubuntu (as of 2018) it is

sudo apt install default-libmysqlclient-dev

In Mac OS, I simply ran this in terminal to fix:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin

This is the quickest fix I found - it adds it to the path, but I think you're better off adding it permanently (ie add it to /etc/paths) if you plan to install MySQL-python in another environment.

(tested in OSX Mountain Lion)

There maybe various answers for the above issue, below is a aggregated solution.

For Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python-dev
$ sudo apt install python-MySQLdb

For CentOS:

$ yum install python-devel mysql-devel

apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev python-dev

Seemed to do the trick.