General :: Why Can't The System Import Modules From The Python Standard Library In Ubuntu

The whole day was more or less spent reinstalling a basic Gnome Ubuntu system. Everything went swimmingly until I started with the XBMC part of the installation. After wrestling with PPAs and apt-get for hours I finally got it installed, but then it all turned awkward in a hurry. It simply refused to start up. I clicked the icon and nothing happened for a good few seconds. The screen then flickered black for an instant, but after that nothing. I started from a terminal and it showed an error message saying it couldn't import Python's os and shutil modules. I found that mighty strange since both modules are part of the Python Standard Library.

Finally, in a bizarre twist, it turns out this doesn't seem to be a XBMC problem, suddenly apt-get started complaining too. TL,DR: I (nor the system) can't import any Standard Library modules in Python in Ubuntu! Is this a path problem? Or have I actually managed to uninstall some vital python packages, if so which ones? I am running Ubuntu 10.10, but I don't think this is necessarily a Ubuntu specific problem. Here are some dumps to show the error messages: (I forgot to copy the XBMC error message, but it looked exactly the same as these below, i.e., it couldn't import the os module) First from apt-get:

Code:

tv@tv:/usr/lib$ sudo apt-get autoremove
[sudo] password for tv:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree

[code]....