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Ami Heines
Asked: 2024-11-18 01:25:23 +0800 CST

Openvpn3 not working after I upgraded to python3.11, how can I make the service use python3.8 instead?

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Openvpn3 stopped working after I upgraded my Ubuntu 20.04 laptop from python3.8 to python 3.11

I get this error:

openvpn3-systemd[9972]: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_dbus_bindings'

I found that import dbus works fine with python3.8 but does not work with python3.11

I tried to make openvpn3 work by changing the default system python back to 3.8 using

sudo update-alternatives --config python

And I also verified that when I use python in the command line, it finds dbus,

python -c 'import dbus'

Restarting the service still fails with the same error. I edited the file /usr/libexec/openvpn3-linux/openvpn3-systemd so it prints the python version before trying to import dbus using these 2 lines at the top of the file:

import sys
print ('openvpn3-python-version-used: ' + sys.version)

And I see it is using python3.11

How can I change the service file /lib/systemd/system/[email protected] to force it to use the older python3.8 version?

Current service file:

[Unit]
Description=OpenVPN 3 Linux - VPN session for %I
After=dbus.service network-online.target
Wants=dbus.service network-online.target
Documentation=man:openvpn3-linux(7)
Documentation=man:openvpn3-systemd(7)

[Service]
Type=notify
PrivateTmp=true
ProtectSystem=true
ProtectHome=true
Environment="PYTHONUNBUFFERED=on"
ExecStart=/usr/libexec/openvpn3-linux/openvpn3-systemd --start %i
ExecReload=/usr/libexec/openvpn3-linux/openvpn3-systemd --restart %i
ExecStop=/usr/libexec/openvpn3-linux/openvpn3-systemd --stop %i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
openvpn

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Don't do that.

    Ubuntu 20.04 ships with Python 3.8. Everything in Ubuntu 20.04 is targeting Python 3.8.

    This is part of the contract; Ubuntu will maintain and backport (security) fixes to Python 3.8; if you have stuff that runs on Python 3.8, it will continue to run on Python 3.8 for the lifetime of 20.04.

    I'm surprised only OpenVPN broke. I would expect a lot of system tools to stop working, such as apt.

    In addition, python should always be Python2 if installed. Python3 should be python3. On a 20.04 system, you should have python3 pointing to python3.8, so run update-alternatives --config python3. For stuff that needs 3.11, make it run python3.11.

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