How to fix "ImportError: No module named argparse" exception in abrt-action-notify and abrt-action-generate-machine-id

Solution Unverified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • ABRT

Issue

ABRT sends dozens of emails about the crash in abrt-action-generate-machine-id and fills the system logs with messages like these:

abrt: detected unhandled Python exception in '/usr/libexec/abrt-action-generate-machine-id'
abrt-server[18907]: Saved Python crash dump of pid 18906 to /var/spool/abrt/pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:33-18906
abrtd: Directory 'pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:33-18906' creation detected
abrtd: Duplicate: core backtrace
abrtd: DUP_OF_DIR: /var/spool/abrt/pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:33-18906
abrtd: Deleting problem directory pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:22-18675 (dup of pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:33-18906)
abrtd: Sending an email...
abrtd: Email was sent to: root@localhost
abrtd: Duplicate: core backtrace
abrtd: DUP_OF_DIR: /var/spool/abrt/pyhook-2015-07-23-03:59:32-5493
abrtd: Deleting problem directory pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:22-18687 (dup of pyhook-2015-07-23-03:59:32-5493)
abrt: detected unhandled Python exception in '/usr/bin/abrt-action-notify'
abrt-server[18918]: Saved Python crash dump of pid 18917 to /var/spool/abrt/pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:34-18917
abrtd: Directory 'pyhook-2015-07-23-08:43:34-18917' creation detected
abrtd: Traceback (most recent call last):
abrtd:   File "/usr/bin/abrt-action-notify", line 18, in <module>
abrtd:     from argparse import ArgumentParser
abrtd: ImportError: No module named argparse

Resolution

This issue was resolved with the release of Errata RHBA-2016-0920.
To resolve the issue, update to abrt-2.0.8-40.el6 or higher.

Root Cause

  • Both abrt-action-notify and abrt-action-generate-machine-id import the Python module argparse which is not included in Python itself but by the package python-argparse which also, is not included by default.
  • abrt package missed the dependency for this package so it's not being installed causing it to report this error in case no other package had it installed.

Diagnostic Steps

  • verify that python-argparse is installed:

    rpm -q python-argparse
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