ABRT ImportError: No Module Named argparse Crash Error

[abrt] a crash has been detected again

abrt_version: 2.0.8
cmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/libexec/abrt-action-generate-machine-id -o /var/spool/abrt/pyhook-2015-08-06-07:11:17-55377/machineid
executable: /usr/libexec/abrt-action-generate-machine-id
hostname: server.mydigitallife.info
kernel: 2.6.32-573.3.1.el6.x86_64
last_occurrence: 1446790283
time: Fri 06 Aug 2015 07:11:17 AM CET
uid: 0

backtrace:
:abrt-action-generate-machine-id:24::ImportError: No module named argparse
:
:Traceback (most recent call last):
: File “/usr/libexec/abrt-action-generate-machine-id”, line 24, in <module>
: from argparse import ArgumentParser
:ImportError: No module named argparse
:
:Local variables in innermost frame:
:__builtins__: <module ‘__builtin__’ (built-in)>
:__file__: ‘/usr/libexec/abrt-action-generate-machine-id’
:__package__: None
:sys: <module ‘sys’ (built-in)>
:__name__: ‘__main__’
:__doc__: ‘This module provides algorithms for generating Machine IDs.\n’

The error happens because ABRT, the Automatic Bug Reporting Tool in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its distributions such as CentOS, is missing a dependency on python-argparse. During normal installation, python-argparse is usually installed as a dependency in other packages. However, if administrator upgraded a system from an earlier version of RHEL, CentOS or others (version 6.5 or earlier) to version 6.7, python-argparse is not installed automatically.

When the argparse package is not installed, /usr/libexec/abrt-action-generate-machine-id or /usr/bin/abrt-action-notify crashes, triggering the abrt-dump-oops to record the error, while also running abrt-action-generate-machine-id again, causing infinite loop that sending thousands of emails and lines of error log.

To resolve the issue, run the following command to install the missing python-argparse dependency:

yum install python-argparse

Once installed, the issue (and emails) should stop immediately.