ImportError: cannot import name urandom

Question

I was building a new Linux environment and seeing following error on Python.

# python -c 'import random'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/random.py", line 47, in <module>
    from os import urandom as _urandom
ImportError: cannot import name urandom

I'm not using virtualenv, so it should not be the issue here.

I had compared the os.py with the file on my Ubuntu, which don't have this error. They are exactly the same, so looks like it is not this issue too.

By checking following, it seems in my Python there is no urandom in os or posix

# python
Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Feb 10 2012, 16:10:22) [GCC] on linux3
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> print os.__file__
/usr/lib/python2.7/os.pyc
>>> dir(os)
['EX_CANTCREAT', 'EX_CONFIG', 'EX_DATAERR', 'EX_IOERR', 'EX_NOHOST', 'EX_NOINPUT', 'EX_NOPERM', 'EX_NOUSER', 'EX_OK', 'EX_OSERR', 'EX_OSFILE', 'EX_PROTOCOL', 'EX_SOFTWARE', 'EX_TEMPFAIL', 'EX_UNAVAILABLE', 'EX_USAGE', 'F_OK', 'NGROUPS_MAX', 'O_APPEND', 'O_ASYNC', 'O_CREAT', 'O_DIRECT', 'O_DIRECTORY', 'O_DSYNC', 'O_EXCL', 'O_LARGEFILE', 'O_NDELAY', 'O_NOATIME', 'O_NOCTTY', 'O_NOFOLLOW', 'O_NONBLOCK', 'O_RDONLY', 'O_RDWR', 'O_RSYNC', 'O_SYNC', 'O_TRUNC', 'O_WRONLY', 'P_NOWAIT', 'P_NOWAITO', 'P_WAIT', 'R_OK', 'SEEK_CUR', 'SEEK_END', 'SEEK_SET', 'TMP_MAX', 'UserDict', 'WCONTINUED', 'WCOREDUMP', 'WEXITSTATUS', 'WIFCONTINUED', 'WIFEXITED', 'WIFSIGNALED', 'WIFSTOPPED', 'WNOHANG', 'WSTOPSIG', 'WTERMSIG', 'WUNTRACED', 'W_OK', 'X_OK', '_Environ', '__all__', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', '_copy_reg', '_execvpe', '_exists', '_exit', '_get_exports_list', '_make_stat_result', '_make_statvfs_result', '_pickle_stat_result', '_pickle_statvfs_result', '_spawnvef', 'abort', 'access', 'altsep', 'chdir', 'chmod', 'chown', 'chroot', 'close', 'closerange', 'confstr', 'confstr_names', 'ctermid', 'curdir', 'defpath', 'devnull', 'dup', 'dup2', 'environ', 'errno', 'error', 'execl', 'execle', 'execlp', 'execlpe', 'execv', 'execve', 'execvp', 'execvpe', 'extsep', 'fchdir', 'fchmod', 'fchown', 'fdatasync', 'fdopen', 'fork', 'forkpty', 'fpathconf', 'fstat', 'fstatvfs', 'fsync', 'ftruncate', 'getcwd', 'getcwdu', 'getegid', 'getenv', 'geteuid', 'getgid', 'getgroups', 'getloadavg', 'getlogin', 'getpgid', 'getpgrp', 'getpid', 'getppid', 'getresgid', 'getresuid', 'getsid', 'getuid', 'initgroups', 'isatty', 'kill', 'killpg', 'lchown', 'linesep', 'link', 'listdir', 'lseek', 'lstat', 'major', 'makedev', 'makedirs', 'minor', 'mkdir', 'mkfifo', 'mknod', 'name', 'nice', 'open', 'openpty', 'pardir', 'path', 'pathconf', 'pathconf_names', 'pathsep', 'pipe', 'popen', 'popen2', 'popen3', 'popen4', 'putenv', 'read', 'readlink', 'remove', 'removedirs', 'rename', 'renames', 'rmdir', 'sep', 'setegid', 'seteuid', 'setgid', 'setgroups', 'setpgid', 'setpgrp', 'setregid', 'setresgid', 'setresuid', 'setreuid', 'setsid', 'setuid', 'spawnl', 'spawnle', 'spawnlp', 'spawnlpe', 'spawnv', 'spawnve', 'spawnvp', 'spawnvpe', 'stat', 'stat_float_times', 'stat_result', 'statvfs', 'statvfs_result', 'strerror', 'symlink', 'sys', 'sysconf', 'sysconf_names', 'system', 'tcgetpgrp', 'tcsetpgrp', 'tempnam', 'times', 'tmpfile', 'tmpnam', 'ttyname', 'umask', 'uname', 'unlink', 'unsetenv', 'utime', 'wait', 'wait3', 'wait4', 'waitpid', 'walk', 'write']
>>> import posix
>>> dir(posix)
['EX_CANTCREAT', 'EX_CONFIG', 'EX_DATAERR', 'EX_IOERR', 'EX_NOHOST', 'EX_NOINPUT', 'EX_NOPERM', 'EX_NOUSER', 'EX_OK', 'EX_OSERR', 'EX_OSFILE', 'EX_PROTOCOL', 'EX_SOFTWARE', 'EX_TEMPFAIL', 'EX_UNAVAILABLE', 'EX_USAGE', 'F_OK', 'NGROUPS_MAX', 'O_APPEND', 'O_ASYNC', 'O_CREAT', 'O_DIRECT', 'O_DIRECTORY', 'O_DSYNC', 'O_EXCL', 'O_LARGEFILE', 'O_NDELAY', 'O_NOATIME', 'O_NOCTTY', 'O_NOFOLLOW', 'O_NONBLOCK', 'O_RDONLY', 'O_RDWR', 'O_RSYNC', 'O_SYNC', 'O_TRUNC', 'O_WRONLY', 'R_OK', 'TMP_MAX', 'WCONTINUED', 'WCOREDUMP', 'WEXITSTATUS', 'WIFCONTINUED', 'WIFEXITED', 'WIFSIGNALED', 'WIFSTOPPED', 'WNOHANG', 'WSTOPSIG', 'WTERMSIG', 'WUNTRACED', 'W_OK', 'X_OK', '__doc__', '__name__', '__package__', '_exit', 'abort', 'access', 'chdir', 'chmod', 'chown', 'chroot', 'close', 'closerange', 'confstr', 'confstr_names', 'ctermid', 'dup', 'dup2', 'environ', 'error', 'execv', 'execve', 'fchdir', 'fchmod', 'fchown', 'fdatasync', 'fdopen', 'fork', 'forkpty', 'fpathconf', 'fstat', 'fstatvfs', 'fsync', 'ftruncate', 'getcwd', 'getcwdu', 'getegid', 'geteuid', 'getgid', 'getgroups', 'getloadavg', 'getlogin', 'getpgid', 'getpgrp', 'getpid', 'getppid', 'getresgid', 'getresuid', 'getsid', 'getuid', 'initgroups', 'isatty', 'kill', 'killpg', 'lchown', 'link', 'listdir', 'lseek', 'lstat', 'major', 'makedev', 'minor', 'mkdir', 'mkfifo', 'mknod', 'nice', 'open', 'openpty', 'pathconf', 'pathconf_names', 'pipe', 'popen', 'putenv', 'read', 'readlink', 'remove', 'rename', 'rmdir', 'setegid', 'seteuid', 'setgid', 'setgroups', 'setpgid', 'setpgrp', 'setregid', 'setresgid', 'setresuid', 'setreuid', 'setsid', 'setuid', 'stat', 'stat_float_times', 'stat_result', 'statvfs', 'statvfs_result', 'strerror', 'symlink', 'sysconf', 'sysconf_names', 'system', 'tcgetpgrp', 'tcsetpgrp', 'tempnam', 'times', 'tmpfile', 'tmpnam', 'ttyname', 'umask', 'uname', 'unlink', 'unsetenv', 'utime', 'wait', 'wait3', 'wait4', 'waitpid', 'write']

Here is what I had on my Linux.

# rpm -qa|grep python
python-base-2.7.1-4.21.i586
python-xml-2.7.1-4.21.i586
dbus-python-0.83.1-3.2.i586
libpython-2.7.1-4.21.i586
python-2.7.3-6.18.i686
#
# ls -l /dev/urandom
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 9 Dec 12 22:16 /dev/urandom

Am I missing any Python modules?

Answer 1

The urandom in os changed between 2.7.1 (your version) and 2.7.3 (current). On 2.7.1 posix does not have a urandom and os.py has a fallback method (at the end of os.py). In 2.7.3 posix always has a urandom function. So maybe you're mixing os.py versions?