Unable to start virt-manager after updating to SLES11 SP2

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2

Situation

After upgrading from SLES10 or SLES11 SP1 to SLES11 SP2, virt-manager fails to start, and the following error messages are reported:

# virt-manager
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virt-manager.py", line 393, in <module>
    _show_startup_error(str(run_e), "".join(traceback.format_exc()))
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virt-manager.py", line 63, in _show_startup_error
    from virtManager.error import vmmErrorDialog
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/error.py", line 25, in <module>
    from virtManager.baseclass import vmmGObject
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/baseclass.py", line 28, in <module>
    running_config, gobject, GObject, gtk = virtManager.guidiff.get_imports()
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/guidiff.py", line 46, in get_imports
    import virtManager.util
  File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/util.py", line 32, in <module>
    xml_escape = virtinst.util.xml_escape
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'util'

Resolution

To resolve the issue, delete the /usr/share/virt-manager/virtinst directory.

Cause

In SLES10 and SLES11 SP1 environments, the virtinst directory virt-manager relies on is stored in the /usr/share/virt-manager directory. In SLES11 SP2 environments, the virtinst directory has been moved to /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/virtinst.

Depending on the upgrade process taken, it is possible for the older /usr/share/virt-manager/virtinst directory to be left on the system. If this happens, the util.py from the older code will be found when launching virt-manager, and the startup will fail.

To resolve this issue, the older /usr/share/virt-manager/virtinst directory should be deleted.

Disclaimer

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