software update indicator crashes and displays wrong error message

[Gioele Barabucci]

On a fresh Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS install, the software update indicator indicator crashes (probably during startup) and reports the a mangled error.

It states

> The error message was 'ror in sitecustomize; set PYTHONVERBOSE
> for traceback: AttributeError: module 'sys' has no attribute
> 'setdefaultencoding' 0;0'.

Please note the "ror" instead of "Error" at the beginning of the reported error message.

The attached screenshot shows this error.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gnome-software 3.20.1+git20170524.0.ea2fe2b0-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.8.0-56.61~16.04.1-generic 4.8.17
Uname: Linux 4.8.0-56-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.6
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Jul 5 13:46:26 2017
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-software
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-06-24 (10 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170215.2)
SourcePackage: gnome-software
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The errors comes from update-notifier but the issue is probably one with the state of the installed packages, could you run apt-get from a command line as suggested and copy the output in a comment?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you also start "/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check" and give its output?

[Gioele Barabucci (gioele)]

apt-get, apt and aptitude work all just fine and produce no errors nor warnings.

update-notifier/apt-check is, indeed, responsible for the error message.

    gioele:~$ /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check
    Error in sitecustomize; set PYTHONVERBOSE for traceback:
    AttributeError: module 'sys' has no attribute 'setdefaultencoding'
    0;0gioele:~$ echo $?
    0

Please note the missing newline between the end of the output of apt-check and the prompt.

    gioele:~$ which python
    /usr/bin/python
    gioele:~$ readlink -f /usr/bin/python
    /usr/bin/python2.7

Thank you Sebastien for the triaging.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

what about
PYTHONVERBOSE=1 /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check
?

[Gioele Barabucci (gioele)]

Problem identified: an unrelated stray one-line `sitecustomize.py` in $PYTHONPATH. Thank you for the hint.

This bug can be closed now, or, maybe, the importance lowered (the indicator should cope better in the presence of warnings).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-software (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]