[SOLVED] OSError: [Errno 2] "dot" not found in path.

When trying to visualize data using pydot in Python you might run into an error where it is stated that “dot” is not found in the path. This is after you already ensured you installed Pydot and ensured you did an import of Pydot in your python code. The main reason for this is that your python code is unable to find the dot executable. The dot executable comes from the graphviz project. This means that even though you did an install of the Pydot you are still missing a critical component.

If we look at the Pydot Pypi page you can see already a hint on this as it will tell you the following; Pydot is an interface to Graphviz and can parse and dump into the DOT language used by Grapgiz. Pydot is written in pure Python.

To resolve this is we can use yum to install Graphviz on Linux, in our case we use Oracle Linux.

yum -y install graphviz

this command will ensure that Graphviz is installed on your local Oracle Linux operating system, to check if the installation has been completed as expected you can use the below command to check the version;

[vagrant@localhost vagrant]$ dot -V
dot - graphviz version 2.30.1 (20180223.0356)

Now, if you run your python code and try something like pydot.graph_from_dot_data to work with dot data and visualize it at a later stage you will see you no longer have the issue you faced in the form of the OSError: [Errno 2] "dot" not found in path error faced before.