Permissions incorrect in httplib

[Cefn]

The permissions for files installed by httplib and dateutil seem to be incorrect. I compared read permissions across all the dist-packages and they all show "user read" permissions apart from these two. The log of permissions is attached. Forcing a reinstall via Synaptic didn't fix the issue. When running the standard instructions at http://kartograph.org/docs/kartograph.py/install-ubuntu.html I discovered the error, when load_entry_point could not inspect the toplevel.txt file, as below, and sure enough, httplib's toplevel.txt file was readable only by user root and group staff.

$ kartograph world.json -o world.svgTraceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/kartograph", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2825, in <module>
    add_activation_listener(lambda dist: dist.activate())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 710, in subscribe
    callback(dist)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2825, in <lambda>
    add_activation_listener(lambda dist: dist.activate())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2257, in activate
    self.insert_on(path)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2364, in insert_on
    self.check_version_conflict()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2403, in check_version_conflict
    for modname in self._get_metadata('top_level.txt'):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2251, in _get_metadata
    for line in self.get_metadata_lines(name):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 1219, in get_metadata_lines
    return yield_lines(self.get_metadata(name))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 1211, in get_metadata
    return self._get(self._fn(self.egg_info,name))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 1326, in _get
    stream = open(path, 'rb')
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/httplib2-0.8-py2.7.egg/EGG-INFO/top_level.txt'

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: python-httplib2 0.8-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-12.19-generic 3.11.3
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Oct 17 14:55:44 2013
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: python-httplib2
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Cefn (6-launchpad-net-cefn-com)]

A workaround which resolved the problem for me (but seems like it's crazy I would have to do this) was running the following commands...

cd /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages

sudo chmod a+r httplib2-0.8-py2.7.egg/EGG-INFO/* python_dateutil-2.1-py2.7.egg/EGG-INFO/*

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

As a part of setting up and installing kartograph you have installed a different version of httplib than the one provided by Ubuntu. Ubuntu provided libraries end up in /usr/lib/, while the error exists in a library in /usr/local/lib. You'll need to contact the developers of kartograph who likely provided the httplib library in /usr/local/lib.

[Cefn (6-launchpad-net-cefn-com)]

I can't figure how it was kartograph, but at some point or another, some python-based installer has grabbed their own copy obviously. I suppose I can just remove it and it will fall back to the original. Worth a go, anyway. No idea what process installed it. Thanks for the debugging help.