debian stretch upgrade - mariadb removed libmysqlclient.so.18 - how to get it back?

Question

I upgraded to debian stretch from jessie.

My mysql database migrated and I can read it. I have a django project that relies on libmysqlclient.so.18 to access mysql.

i have mariadb-server and libmariadbclient18 packages installed.

what should i do to make sure django can access my database?

this is the error i get:

    raise ImproperlyConfigured("Error loading MySQLdb module: %s" % e)
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Error loading MySQLdb module: libmysqlclient.so.18: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

i tried ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmariadbclient.so.18 to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.so.18 which changes the error to the following:

    raise ImproperlyConfigured("Error loading MySQLdb module: %s" % e)
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Error loading MySQLdb module: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.so.18: version `libmysqlclient_18' not found (required by /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/_mysql.so)

Answer 1

as a temporary fix, I installed the deb for libmysqlclient18 directly from here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/xenial/amd64/libmysqlclient18/5.6.25-0ubuntu1

a more official answer would be welcome.

Answer 2

I fixed this error with ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmariadb.so.2 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmysqlclient.so.18

The libmariadb.so.2 comes with the libmariadb2 package.

Answer 3

I wanted to say thank you for creating this thread, it helped immensely. My issue was near identical and it occurred after a distribution upgrade to Debian Buster - I elected to upgrade all mariaDB packages from version 10.1 to 10.3 while opting to keep original config files.

Here is an alternate (hotfix) solution that worked for me:

ln -s libmariadb.so.3 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmariadbclient.so.18

This solution is documented by mariaDB below: https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-13934