I'm experiencing some strange behavior when starting up python on a Debian-based PowerPC platform. Normally, I operate from this platform with a root file system on an IDE flash drive (/dev/hda1). However, I'm trying to get my system to run with root on a mechanical SATA drive (/dev/sda1). Both are installed on a PowerPC board via a PMC daughter board.
When running off the flash drive, the Python interpreter loads and runs just fine. However, when running from SATA, the interpreter seems to have problems with importing things like site, os, etc. I've played around with PYTHONHOME to no effect. I even went as far as setting PYTHONHOME to some off the wall location (so no stdlibs will load) and invoking Python as: host$ PYTHONHOME=/tmp python -d -v -S # installing zipimport hook import zipimport # builtin # installed zipimport hook Python 2.4.4 (#2, Apr 5 2007, 19:01:44) [GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2 >>> i=0 File "<stdin>", line 1 i=0 ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> You'll note that doing something as simple as setting "i=0" results in a syntax error. If I run the same thing on the IDE flash drive, it works: host$ PYTHONHOME=/tmp python -d -v -S # installing zipimport hook import zipimport # builtin # installed zipimport hook Python 2.4.4 (#2, Apr 5 2007, 19:01:44) [GCC 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)] on linux2 >>> i=0 >>> Any ideas?! What could possibly cause a difference of operation between running from a IDE flash drive (/dev/hda1) vs. SATA (/dev/ sda1)? Other than toggling hda1 vs. sda1 in /etc/fstab, the filesystems are being built identically. Could it be that shared libraries aren't being loaded correctly or fast enough off the SATA drive vs. flash? Shooting in the dark here... Thanks, Jon Wahlmann -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list