Python3 dbus import error: undefined symbol: _Py_ZeroStruct

I am trying to use python-mbus for python 3, i have installed it with

sudo apt-get install python3-dbus

However the import fails with:

asdf@asdf:~$ python3
Python 3.6.3 (default, Oct  3 2017, 21:16:13) 
[GCC 7.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import dbus
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/dbus/__init__.py", line 77, in <module>
    import dbus.types as types
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/dbus/types.py", line 6, in <module>
    from _dbus_bindings import (
ImportError: /usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/_dbus_bindings.so: undefined symbol: _Py_ZeroStruct

I have also installed it with:

pip3 uninstall dbus-python

But i still get the same error:

asdf@asdf:~$ python3
Python 3.6.3 (default, Oct  3 2017, 21:16:13) 
[GCC 7.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import dbus
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/asdf/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dbus/__init__.py", line 77, in <module>
    import dbus.types as types
  File "/home/asdf/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/dbus/types.py", line 6, in <module>
    from _dbus_bindings import (
ImportError: /home/asdf/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/_dbus_bindings.so: undefined symbol: _Py_ZeroStruct

This is in sys.path:

>>> print (sys.path)
['', '/usr/lib/python36.zip', '/usr/lib/python3.6', '/usr/lib/python3.6/lib-dynload', '/home/asdf/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages', '/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python3.6/dist-packages']

Im runnin on Debian GNU/Linux buster/sid

Any idea of what am I doing wrong?

Answer

I’m not exactly sure how I fixed this (can’t comment), but I had the exact same problem and I did:

sudo pip3 uninstall dbus-python
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade
sudo aptitude -f

After which aptitude alerted me of some dependency issues with Python, and I “downgraded” a version of Python I had installed on Ubuntu Xenial to the default package provided by Artful. Now, import dbus on Python 3.6.3 doesn’t pass any errors. Don’t know if it actually works well, though.

Maybe you’ll be able to fix it in a similar fashion, since Debian and Ubuntu packages are usually the same.