Installation Troubleshooting

If you have an issue not covered here, please report it so it can be fixed or a workaround found!

The server logs are in mygame/server/logs/. To easily view server logs in the terminal, you can run evennia -l, or start/reload the server with evennia start -l or evennia reload -l.

Check your Requirements

Any system that supports Python3.10+ should work.

  • Linux/Unix

  • Windows (Win7, Win8, Win10, Win11)

  • Mac OSX (>10.5 recommended)

  • Python (3.10 and 3.11 are tested. 3.11 is recommended)

  • Twisted (v22.3+)

    • ZopeInterface (v3.0+) - usually included in Twisted packages

    • Linux/Mac users may need the gcc and python-dev packages or equivalent.

    • Windows users need MS Visual C++ and maybe pypiwin32.

  • Django (v4.2+), be warned that latest dev version is usually untested with Evennia.

  • GIT - version control software used if you want to install the sources (but also useful to track your own code)

Confusion of location (GIT installation)

When doing the Git installation, some may be confused and install Evennia in the wrong location. After following the instructions (and using a virtualenv), the folder structure should look like this:

muddev/
    evenv/
    evennia/
    mygame/

The evennia code itself is found inside evennia/evennia/ (so two levels down). Your settings file is mygame/server/conf/settings.py and the parent setting file is evennia/evennia/settings_default.py.

Virtualenv setup fails

When doing the python3.11 -m venv evenv step, some users report getting an error; something like:

Error: Command '['evenv', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip']' 
returned non-zero exit status 1

You can solve this by installing the python3.11-venv package or equivalent for your OS. Alternatively you can bootstrap it in this way:

python3.11 -m --without-pip evenv

This should set up the virtualenv without pip. Activate the new virtualenv and then install pip from within it:

python -m ensurepip --upgrade

If that fails, a worse alternative to try is

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3.10    (linux/unix/WSL only)

Either way, you should now be able to continue with the installation.

Localhost not found

If localhost doesn’t work when trying to connect to your local game, try 127.0.0.1, which is the same thing.

Linux Troubleshooting

  • If you get an error when installing Evennia (especially with lines mentioning failing to include Python.h) then try sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools python3-dev. Once installed, run pip install -e evennia again.

  • When doing a git install, some not-updated Linux distributions may give errors about a too-old setuptools or missing functools. If so, update your environment with pip install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools. Then try pip install -e evennia again.

  • One user reported a rare issue on Ubuntu 16 is an install error on installing Twisted; Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-vnIFTg/twisted/ with errors like distutils.errors.DistutilsError: Could not find suitable distribution for Requirement.parse('incremental>=16.10.1'). This appears possible to solve by simply updating Ubuntu with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.

  • Users of Fedora (notably Fedora 24) has reported a gcc error saying the directory /usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-cc1 is missing, despite gcc itself being installed. The confirmed work-around seems to be to install the redhat-rpm-config package with e.g. sudo dnf install redhat-rpm-config.

  • Some users trying to set up a virtualenv on an NTFS filesystem find that it fails due to issues with symlinks not being supported. Answer is to not use NTFS (seriously, why would you do that to yourself?)

Mac Troubleshooting

  • Some Mac users have reported not being able to connect to localhost (i.e. your own computer). If so, try to connect to 127.0.0.1 instead, which is the same thing. Use port 4000 from mud clients and port 4001 from the web browser as usual.

  • If you get a MemoryError when starting Evennia, or when looking at the log, this may be due to an sqlite versioning issue. A user in our forums found a working solution for this. Here is another variation to solve it.

Windows Troubleshooting

  • If you install with pip install evennia and find that the evennia command is not available, run py -m evennia once. This should add the evennia binary to your environment. If this fails, make sure you are using a virtualenv. Worst case, you can keep using py -m evennia in the places where the evennia command is used.

  • Install Python from the Python homepage. You will need to be a Windows Administrator to install packages.

  • When installing Python, make sure to check-mark all install options, especially the one about making Python available on the path (you may have to scroll to see it). This allows you to just write python in any console without first finding where the python program actually sits on your hard drive.

  • If you get a command not found when trying to run the evennia program after installation, try closing the Console and starting it again (remember to re-activate the virtualenv if you use one!). Sometimes Windows is not updating its environment properly and evennia will be available only in the new console.

  • If you installed Python but the python command is not available (even in a new console), then you might have missed installing Python on the path. In the Windows Python installer you get a list of options for what to install. Most or all options are pre-checked except this one, and you may even have to scroll down to see it. Reinstall Python and make sure it’s checked.

  • If your MUD client cannot connect to localhost:4000, try the equivalent 127.0.0.1:4000 instead. Some MUD clients on Windows does not appear to understand the alias localhost.

  • Some Windows users get an error installing the Twisted ‘wheel’. A wheel is a pre-compiled binary package for Python. A common reason for this error is that you are using a 32-bit version of Python, but Twisted has not yet uploaded the latest 32-bit wheel. Easiest way to fix this is to install a slightly older Twisted version. So if, say, version 22.1 failed, install 22.0 manually with pip install twisted==22.0. Alternatively you could check that you are using the 64-bit version of Python and uninstall any 32bit one. If so, you must then deactivate the virtualenv, delete the evenv folder and recreate it anew with your new Python.

  • If you’ve done a git installation, and your server won’t start with an error message like AttributeError: module 'evennia' has no attribute '_init', it may be a python path issue. In a terminal, cd to (your python directory)\site-packages and run the command echo "C:\absolute\path\to\evennia" > local-vendors.pth. Open the created file in your favorite IDE and make sure it is saved with UTF-8 encoding and not UTF-8 with BOM.

  • If your server won’t start, with no error messages (and no log files at all when starting from scratch), try to start with evennia ipstart instead. If you then see an error about system cannot find the path specified, it may be that the file evennia\evennia\server\twistd.bat has the wrong path to the twistd executable. This file is auto-generated, so try to delete it and then run evennia start to rebuild it and see if it works. If it still doesn’t work you need to open it in a text editor like Notepad. It’s just one line containing the path to the twistd.exe executable as determined by Evennia. If you installed Twisted in a non-standard location this might be wrong and you should update the line to the real location.

  • Some users have reported issues with Windows WSL and anti-virus software during Evennia development. Timeout errors and the inability to run evennia connections may be due to your anti-virus software interfering. Try disabling or changing your anti-virus software settings.