Had to reinstall ArchBang today because after I switched from using onboard video to my GeForce 9600 it no longer booted into X. Monkeyed around with my xorg.conf for a bit and decided it would be quicker to just reinstall, as it was almost a fresh install anyways. So suddenly I’m getting this strange error every time I open up a new terminal:

File "/usr/bin/archbey", line 118
    print 'Taking shot in',
                         ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

On top of that I no longer was able to reboot by a simple right click and Exit (oblogout) as I typically would be able to under OpenBox. So I tried a quick reboot via the terminal and it resolved none of these issues. So I did some digging around and it turns out it’s the result of a pacman -Syu command updating python to python2. To resolve this problem you’ll have to manually edit some scripts as you notice they aren’t working.

Archey
Start off by opening the archey script being called each time you open the terminal with your favourite editor.

sudo nano /usr/bin/archbey

Edit the first line so that it uses python2 instead of python and then save the file (Ctrl+O) and then exit (Ctrl+X).

Now open up a new terminal, you should see Archey running with all of your system stats and without any errors.

ObLogout
To get the exit option in your right click menu working you’ll need to edit another script. You’ll be doing the exact same thing on this script.

sudo nano /usr/bin/oblogout 

Now change the first line from #!/usr/bin/python to #!/usr/bin/python2 and then save and exit the file the same way as before.

Now when you right click and select exit you should be prompted with your shutdown/reboot options as expected.

Conclusion
I suspect I will keep encountering programs that were not updated to use the newest python build after my pacman update. It’s a shame because I’m new to Arch and this is the kind of thing I’m used to not worrying about with aptitude/apt-get on a Debian system. In any case, I now know the solution so as I find things that don’t work I’ll manually tweak the scripts and be on my way.

Brad Fettes

A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 20 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.