2020.3 kali apt update now giving module not found error

[king_julian]

Pls help APT now broken.

Posted on stack exchange as well.

I did a sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y and received the following error:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 35, in <module>
from debpython.version import SUPPORTED, debsorted, vrepr, \

File "/usr/share/python/debpython/version.py", line 24, in <module>
from ConfigParser import SafeConfigParser
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ConfigParser'
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

After reading, I think this is related to either a manual fiddling somewhere in /usr/bin (Now I have read never to do that, but I can't recall if ever I did in the past...), or something related to the default python version the distro requires.

This is what I can see in terms of the python on the system: /usr/bin/python is a link to python2 and python2 is a link to python2.7.
Not sure if this is pointing to the correct version or even related to the error above?

Python -V shows : 2.7.18

After some advise received , I tried :

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
sudo apt -f --reinstall install python-configparser
& This is what I got :

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 62.6 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://kali.download/kali kali-rolling/main amd64 python-configparser all 3.5.0b2-3 [62.6 kB]
Fetched 62.6 kB in 1s (57.7 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 402234 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../python-configparser_3.5.0b2-3_all.deb ...
Unpacking python-configparser (3.5.0b2-3) over (3.5.0b2-3) ...
Setting up mercurial-common (5.4.1-1) ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 35, in <module>
from debpython.version import SUPPORTED, debsorted, vrepr, \
File "/usr/share/python/debpython/version.py", line 24, in <module>
from ConfigParser import SafeConfigParser
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ConfigParser'
dpkg: error processing package mercurial-common (--configure):
installed mercurial-common package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Setting up python-configparser (3.5.0b2-3) ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pycompile", line 35, in <module>
from debpython.version import SUPPORTED, debsorted, vrepr, \
File "/usr/share/python/debpython/version.py", line 24, in <module>
from ConfigParser import SafeConfigParser
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'ConfigParser'
dpkg: error processing package python-configparser (--configure):
installed python-configparser package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mercurial:
mercurial depends on mercurial-common (= 5.4.1-1); however:
Package mercurial-common is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package mercurial (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
mercurial-common
python-configparser
mercurial
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I still get the error.

Also noticed that ConfigParser is present in /usr/lib/python2.7 :
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
⚡ ls /usr/lib/python2.7 | grep Con

& this is what I get :
ConfigParser.py
ConfigParser.pyc

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I now get this message even when trying to install posix man pages package as example. So everything on APT is then broken ?

Any ideas on how to troubleshoot or fix this please ?

[king_julian]

Still no working solution ��

[king_julian]

just in-case someone search I want to document what I did to solve this :

After various other forums etc etc.... and doing a lot of experimenting :-). nothing worked.

Tried the #apt-cache rdepends commands again on all python,python2,python3 and the
python#-minimal packages and noticed that python2.7 was often showing duplicates in the outputs.

Then tried
#dpkg -V (package)
on the various different python packages and python2-minimal basically gave me a weird output with some "?" on the left and mentioned pycompile(sorry I did not screenshot that at the time) but it was the only one showing any output and at that time i decided python2.7 was perhaps broken. So proceeded as follows :

Linked my /usr/bin/ python to python3
#sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python
and then, verified the version to make sure it's pointing somewhere
#python --version.
Then, did an autoremove :
#apt autoremove
and,finally i purged 2.7 minimal
#sudo apt purge -y python2.7-minimal.

Finallly I could use apt without any issues. and , did a :
#apt clean
#sudo dpkg --force-all --configure -a
and so far everything seems fine. So I immediately powered off and took a vm snapshot and could start up pretty normal after all that.

I have since also managed to do another
#sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
and all went smooth.