vtk cannnot be loaded in python after installing python-vtk6

[Liren Zhu]

After installing python-vtk6, trying to import vtk in python resulting in the following error:
>>> import vtk
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vtk/__init__.py", line 39, in <module>
    from vtkCommonCore import *
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vtk/vtkCommonCore.py", line 1, in <module>
    from vtkCommonCorePython import *
ImportError: No module named vtkCommonCorePython

file command on vtkCommanCorePython.so gives the following information:
file /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vtk/vtkCommonCorePython.so
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vtk/vtkCommonCorePython.so: broken symbolic link to `../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/libvtkCommonCorePython27D-6.0.so'

Similar so files from libvtk6 package do exist with different names such as libvtkCommonCorePython27D-6.0.so.6.0

The .so symbol links in the vtk directory probably all have the wrong names.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Leo Dearden (k-leo)]

Thank you, Liren Zhu.

Based on your investigation, I replaced all the /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vtk/vtk*.so links, using some command line hackery which should be equivalent to:

for link in `ls /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/vtk/vtk*.so`; do target=$(readlink $link).6.0; echo $link; sudo rm $link; sudo ln -s $target $link ; done

This seems to have fixed the problem for me (a VTK python example now works).

Script is believed good but not fully tested, so use at your own risk. :-)

[Alex (adlinds3)]

Leo, your method worked great for me. Thanks for posting!