Comment 6 for bug 81857

Synaptic tells me syntax_error.py on my system came from pylib 0.7. (python2.4-pylib version 0.7.20050829-0ubuntu1 if you want to be precise) http://<email address hidden>/msg00120.html weakly says the problem is fixed in pylib 0.9.

Not sure why Ubuntu is lagging back at pylib 0.7, but from what I can gather, that is the problem. Synaptic says my pylib is up to date, so I gather no more recent version is available in the repositories in my sources.list. (a copy of which I've attached to this note).

I can confirm that the suggested work-around of adding a # in front of the offending line of syntax_error.py so the line is a comment and not a syntax error does seem to work. I had synaptic re-install an arbitrarily picked one of the many packages (python-buffy was the one that caught my eye) that dpkg.log said were only half configured. Synaptic (or its underpinnings) seems to have taken that as the cue to finish up the install on the dozen or some packages that had been stumbling on this problem. Hopefully that will chase away that griping I seemed to be seeing from the package installer every time an update for my system came along. Here I should re-tell the story of the boy who called wolf as explanation as to why it is important to get rid of all those annoying little messages.