Django "settings are not configured" error and cannot define environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE
In your list I did not see the virtual env activation.
Did you activate the virtual env ?
'''
source activate testproject
'''
This error is easy to reproduce. Basically just start a new django project and run the server with django-admin. I read many StackOverflow posts and tried multiple methods but did not work. Here are the detailed steps to reproduce:

Created new directory named testproject
pipenv install django
Started new project named test with the django start project script
pipenv shell
django-admin runserver
Error: "django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Requested setting DEBUG, but settings are not configured. You must either define the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE or call settings.configure() before accessing settings."
Typed this in ubuntu as suggested in the official django docs:  export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=test.settings 
django-admin runserver
Got a giant line of error followed by ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'test'. However, if i do django-admin runserver --pythonpath=. --settings="test.settings" the server successfully runs.

I know I can just use python manage.py to start the server but my project uses Django cache framework and when I try to access the cache the same settings are not configured error is thrown. Trying to understand what is going on, any help would be greatly appreciated.