Boy have I had a long day today. Like most Linux days it started out fun but then turned funny.
The whole day was more or less spent reinstalling a basic Gnome Ubuntu system. Everything went swimmingly until I started with the XBMC part of the installation. After wrestling with PPAs and apt-get for hours I finally got it installed, but then it all turned awkward in a hurry.
It simply refused to start up. I clicked the icon and nothing happened for a good few seconds. The screen then flickered black for an instant, but after that nothing. I started from a terminal and it showed an error message saying it couldn't import Python's os and shutil modules. I found that mighty strange since both modules are part of the Python Standard Library.
Finally, in a bizarre twist, it turns out this doesn't seem to be a XBMC problem, suddenly apt-get started complaining too.
TL,DR: I (nor the system) can't import any Standard Library modules in Python in Ubuntu! Help!
Is this a path problem? Or have I actually managed to uninstall some vital python packages, if so which ones?
I am running Ubuntu 10.10, but I don't think this is necessarily a Ubuntu specific problem.
Here are some dumps to show the error messages: (I forgot to copy the XBMC error message, but it looked exactly the same as these below, i.e., it couldn't import the os module)
First from apt-get:
Code:
tv@tv:/usr/lib$ sudo apt-get autoremove
[sudo] password for tv:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libqt3-mt python-qt3 python-sip
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 19.2MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 75111 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing python-qt3 ...
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/sbin/update-python-modules", line 11, in <module>
import sys,os,shutil
ImportError: No module named os
dpkg: error processing python-qt3 (--remove):
subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/sbin/update-python-modules", line 11, in <module>
import sys,os,shutil
ImportError: No module named os
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Removing python-sip ...
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/sbin/update-python-modules", line 11, in <module>
import sys,os,shutil
ImportError: No module named os
dpkg: error processing python-sip (--remove):
subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Removing libqt3-mt ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
python-qt3
python-sip
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
tv@tv:/usr/lib$
Second from trying to import the os module in a regular python prompt in the terminal:
Code:
tv@tv:~$ python
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Sep 15 2010, 15:52:39)
[GCC 4.4.5] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named os
>>>
