Pip issue: No module named 'apt_pkg'¶

When you type pip in your terminal and see the error: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'apt_pkg'

Bash

$ pip --version

Bash

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/command-not-found", line 28, in <module>
    from CommandNotFound import CommandNotFound
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/CommandNotFound/CommandNotFound.py", line 19, in <module>
    from CommandNotFound.db.db import SqliteDatabase
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/CommandNotFound/db/db.py", line 5, in <module>
    import apt_pkg
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'apt_pkg'

The error indicates that the apt_pkg module is not found. This can happen if the Python environment is not set up correctly.

Bash

cd /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages
ls -l apt_pkg* # find the apt_pkg.** path

sudo cp apt_pkg.cpython-<version>-<arch>.so apt_pkg.so
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3-pip