MacOS – python2.7 cannot be opened because of a problem

crashmacospython

Running into an odd issue when my system starts up:
python failure

I have not been able to track the point of failure down yet. I assume that it is some application that is attempting to start at system startup, but I have not yet been able to isolate the application or daemon. The actual problem report seems to be quite unhelpful in this case:

Process:               python2.7 [6982]
Path:                  /Users/USER/*/python2.7
Identifier:            python2.7
Version:               ???
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [6980]
Responsible:           python2.7 [6982]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2015-09-18 16:22:28.150 -0400
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.11 (15A282b)
Report Version:        11
Anonymous UUID:        032A40CC-C2C4-1235-F611-B0961DE616DB


Time Awake Since Boot: 5100 seconds

System Integrity Protection: disabled

Crashed Thread:        0

Exception Type:        EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @executable_path/../.Python
  Referenced from: /Users/USER/*/python
  Reason: image not found

Binary Images:
    0x7fff67746000 -     0x7fff6777cf5f  dyld (360.14) <DF977301-4A63-32ED-9939-1EE3122D18D4> /usr/lib/dyld

I thought that perhaps it was an issue with Homebrew's python installation, but after removing and re-adding it, this does not appear to be the case.

Any thoughts?

Best Answer

Was fighting with this issue today, after I upgraded python using brew, the annoying pop up wouldn't let me work on my Mac! The only difference is that it was shouting for python3.4. After couple hours of digging I just decided to:

  • remove all python3 whatsoever, the one installed by brew and the one installed manually from dmg.

  • search for all remaining symlinks to python I've had on my development projects folder. After deactivating all the venv's and removing the symlinks the pop up was gone.

Then I found this post of jeremycade which explains the less aggressive approach.