yum python logger error bad marshal data 

Interesting bug encountered today after a fresh install of RHEL5 from 5.3 media.

When attempting to run the command, ‘yum’.  The following error was presented:

# yum
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 4, in ?
    import yum
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 30, in ?
    import logging
ValueError: bad marshal data

To correct this issue, I first needed to determine if the problem was with yum, or something else.  So I created a simple python script:

#!/usr/bin/python
import logging

Actually, really simple. This helped me isolate the issue.

When running this program I was presented with the same error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 1, in ?
    import logging
ValueError: bad marshal data

So I wondered, what could cause this corruption. Maybe the installation had a corrupt package installed. rpm verification to double check.

# rpm -Va python
.M...U..    /usr/lib64/python2.4/aifc.py
..5.....    /usr/lib64/python2.4/logging/__init__.pyc

So I though, maybe somehow the .pyc file became corrupt. So lets just delete this file, since it is only a byte-compiled file that will be re-generated on-demand.

And, well, that was the solution:

# rm /usr/lib64/python2.4/logging/__init__.pyc

The problem is now resolved.

The RPM of python that was installed: python-2.4.3-24.el5.x86_64.rpm