can't run gdb on ubuntu: Could not find platform independent libraries

Question

Can't run 'gdb ./a.out' or even 'gdb --help' without getting:

$ gdb ./a.out 
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
ImportError: No module named site

Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS is up to date. Works in 'root'. I'd rather not hardcode a $PYTHONHOME location. Any hints appreciated. Baffled.

update: when I set $PYTHONHOME I get:

$ PYTHONHOME=/usr/lib/python2.7 gdb ./a.out 
ImportError: No module named site

update: I do have python-dev installed for native module creation.

Thx

Answer 1

Could you be running into this bug? Do you have python and python-libs installed?