Import error with ctypes in python27, segmentation fault

Question

I am running python 2.7 on MacOSX, and started to get a segmentation fault when running anything related to ctypes. E.g.

>>> import ctypes
Segmentation fault

The error message being: "Python quit unexpectedly while using the _ctypes.so plugin." I use modules with ctype components on a daily basis, and haven't made any major changes to my python installation recently. The actually _ctypes.so file looks normal:

$ ls -l _ctypes.so
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  148720 Nov 12 22:12 _ctypes.so

Answer 1

This is a known bug in read only filesystems, in this thread you can find a patch along with more information.