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[Python-Dev] Segmentaion fault with wrongly set PYTHONPATH on Windows

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Mon Oct 22 16:18:19 CEST 2012 
On Oct 22, 2012, at 03:40 PM, Victor Stinner wrote:

>The issue #8766 is about PYTHONPATH environment variable, not
>PYTHONHOME. Test on Linux with Python 3.4:
>
>$ PYTHONHOME=/x ./python
>Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding
>ImportError: No module named 'encodings'
>Abandon (core dumped)
>
>It's not a segfault, but an "abort". It's different: abort() is called
>by the application (Python) when something goes wrong. In this case,
>Python is unable to locate the standard library. It's not a bug: I
>asked Python to look in /x directory, whereas this directory doesn't
>exist.

We have this bug in Ubuntu:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python3.2/+bug/938869

This is caused by the VMware player installer playing games with $PYTHONHOME
to try to point it at its own *Python 2* runtime, and trying to call
lsb_release (a Python 3 script on Ubuntu 12.10) while $PYTHONHOME is pointing
at the wrong runtime.

I personally think this is a bug in the VMware player installer script.

-Barry
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