“lxml & xmlsec libxml2 library version mismatch” error under uWSGI

[andersk]

If libxml2-dev was installed when uWSGI was built, then importing xmlsec within uWSGI leads to an incorrect error xmlsec.InternalError: (-1, 'lxml & xmlsec libxml2 library version mismatch'). There’s no such error outside of uWSGI.

(I can work around this error with --no-binary=lxml --no-binary=xmlsec, but that wastes a lot more CI time and shouldn’t be necessary.)

Reproduction in a fresh container:

$ docker run --rm -it ubuntu:22.04
root@076333186bac:/# apt update
…
root@076333186bac:/# apt install -y gcc libxml2-dev python3-dev python3-venv
…
root@076333186bac:/# python3 -m venv venv
root@076333186bac:/# . venv/bin/activate
(venv) root@076333186bac:/# pip install uWSGI xmlsec
…
Successfully installed lxml-5.2.1 uWSGI-2.0.25.1 xmlsec-1.3.14
(venv) root@076333186bac:/# cat > app.py <<EOF
import xmlsec

def application(env, start_response):
    start_response("200 OK", [("Content-Type", "text/plain")])
    return [b"Hello, world!\n"]

EOF
(venv) root@076333186bac:/# python -c 'import xmlsec'
(venv) root@076333186bac:/# uwsgi --http :9090 --wsgi-file app.py
*** Starting uWSGI 2.0.25.1 (64bit) on [Mon May  6 22:18:16 2024] ***
compiled with version: 11.4.0 on 06 May 2024 22:17:53
os: Linux-6.8.7 #1-NixOS SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Apr 17 09:23:43 UTC 2024
nodename: 076333186bac
machine: x86_64
clock source: unix
detected number of CPU cores: 12
current working directory: /
detected binary path: /venv/bin/uwsgi
!!! no internal routing support, rebuild with pcre support !!!
uWSGI running as root, you can use --uid/--gid/--chroot options
*** WARNING: you are running uWSGI as root !!! (use the --uid flag) *** 
*** WARNING: you are running uWSGI without its master process manager ***
your memory page size is 4096 bytes
detected max file descriptor number: 1024
lock engine: pthread robust mutexes
thunder lock: disabled (you can enable it with --thunder-lock)
uWSGI http bound on :9090 fd 4
spawned uWSGI http 1 (pid: 4203)
uwsgi socket 0 bound to TCP address 127.0.0.1:46691 (port auto-assigned) fd 3
uWSGI running as root, you can use --uid/--gid/--chroot options
*** WARNING: you are running uWSGI as root !!! (use the --uid flag) *** 
Python version: 3.10.12 (main, Nov 20 2023, 15:14:05) [GCC 11.4.0]
*** Python threads support is disabled. You can enable it with --enable-threads ***
Python main interpreter initialized at 0x55a23eea0bc0
uWSGI running as root, you can use --uid/--gid/--chroot options
*** WARNING: you are running uWSGI as root !!! (use the --uid flag) *** 
your server socket listen backlog is limited to 100 connections
your mercy for graceful operations on workers is 60 seconds
mapped 72904 bytes (71 KB) for 1 cores
*** Operational MODE: single process ***
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "app.py", line 1, in <module>
    import xmlsec
xmlsec.InternalError: (-1, 'lxml & xmlsec libxml2 library version mismatch')
unable to load app 0 (mountpoint='') (callable not found or import error)
*** no app loaded. going in full dynamic mode ***
uWSGI running as root, you can use --uid/--gid/--chroot options
*** WARNING: you are running uWSGI as root !!! (use the --uid flag) *** 
*** uWSGI is running in multiple interpreter mode ***
spawned uWSGI worker 1 (and the only) (pid: 4202, cores: 1)

[andersk]

Some debugging information:

>>> import ctypes, lxml, xmlsec
>>> libxml2 = ctypes.CDLL("libxml2.so.2")
>>> ctypes.c_char_p.in_dll(libxml2, "xmlParserVersion").value
b'20913'
>>> lxml.etree.LIBXML_VERSION
(2, 12, 6)
>>> lxml.etree.LIBXML_COMPILED_VERSION
(2, 12, 6)
>>> xmlsec.get_libxml_version()
(2, 12, 6)
>>> xmlsec.get_libxml_compiled_version()
(2, 12, 6)

xmlParserVersion, LIBXML_VERSION, and LIBXML_COMPILED_VERSION are the same inside and outside uWSGI.

[eliasmazur]

I'm getting this same error on a container that I just re-compiled and it was working fine. I use python3-saml and that's breaking with this error when I run the container.

Here is the log:

[2024-05-20 02:54:20 +0000] [11] [ERROR] Exception in worker process
2024-05-19 22:54:20 Traceback (most recent call last):
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/arbiter.py", line 583, in spawn_worker
2024-05-19 22:54:20     worker.init_process()
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/workers/ggevent.py", line 203, in init_process
2024-05-19 22:54:20     super(GeventWorker, self).init_process()
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 129, in init_process
2024-05-19 22:54:20     self.load_wsgi()
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 138, in load_wsgi
2024-05-19 22:54:20     self.wsgi = self.app.wsgi()
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/app/base.py", line 67, in wsgi
2024-05-19 22:54:20     self.callable = self.load()
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 52, in load
2024-05-19 22:54:20     return self.load_wsgiapp()
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 41, in load_wsgiapp
2024-05-19 22:54:20     return util.import_app(self.app_uri)
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/gunicorn/util.py", line 350, in import_app
2024-05-19 22:54:20     __import__(module)
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/opt/app/tinyflask/__init__.py", line 11, in <module>
2024-05-19 22:54:20     import tinyflask.views
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/opt/app/tinyflask/views.py", line 24, in <module>
2024-05-19 22:54:20     from onelogin.saml2.auth import OneLogin_Saml2_Auth
2024-05-19 22:54:20   File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/onelogin/saml2/auth.py", line 12, in <module>
2024-05-19 22:54:20     import xmlsec
2024-05-19 22:54:20 xmlsec.InternalError: (-1, 'lxml & xmlsec libxml2 library version mismatch')
2024-05-19 22:54:20 [2024-05-20 02:54:20 +0000] [11] [INFO] Worker exiting (pid: 11)

Here is my Dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu:bionic

RUN apt update
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get -y upgrade
RUN apt-get install -y pkg-config
RUN apt-get install -y software-properties-common apt-utils
RUN add-apt-repository -y ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
RUN apt-get install -y vim
RUN apt-get install -y python3.7
RUN apt-get install -y python3-pip

RUN apt-get install -y libxml2-dev libxmlsec1-dev

RUN mkdir -p /opt/app
WORKDIR /opt/app/
COPY . .
RUN pip3 install --upgrade pip
RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

RUN pip3 install python3-saml

RUN touch /var/log/cron.log

RUN echo "35 6 * * * root /usr/bin/python3 /opt/app/last_login.py >> /opt/app/audit.log" >> /etc/crontab

CMD (cron) && exec gunicorn tinyflask:app -b 0.0.0.0:80 --workers 3 -k gevent

And this is the requirements.txt:

Click==7.0
Flask==1.1.1
Flask-Cors==3.0.8
gevent==1.4.0
greenlet==0.4.15
gunicorn==19.9.0
itsdangerous==1.1.0
Jinja2==2.10.1
MarkupSafe==1.1.1
Werkzeug==0.15.5
flask-compress==1.4.0
requests==2.24.0
python-dateutil==2.8.0
pytz==2021.1
pickleshare==0.7.5
xmltodict

I'm stuck. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

[andres-holvi]

It seems like lxml@5.2.1 uses libxml2@2.12.6. However, libxml2@2.12.7 has been released, and python-xmlsec@1.3.14 breaks because of this libxml2 version mismatch (?)

Not sure who should be in charge of fixing this, but I suppose using libxml2@2.12.6 could work.

[gregbrant2]

@eliasmazur I have the same use case as you with python3-saml. Based on what @andersk said, I've restricted the package version of LXML like so

lxml >= 4.6.5, !=4.7.0, <=5.2.1 

My build is working again now.

[eliasmazur]

Thanks for the help. I realized I was restricting all packages except xmlsec. I restricted to an earlier version and it now works. Looks like python3-saml was installing the latest xmlsec and that was causing the mismatch.

[mstuttgart]

In my work, we use sigxml and xmlsec. Both install lxml with binaries, causing the same error.

xmlsec.InternalError: (-1, 'lxml & xmlsec libxml2 library version mismatch')

To resolve this, I install using the --no-binary pip flag. (work on Ubuntu 22.04, Python 3.10 and Pip 22.0.2)

pip install --no-binary lxml==4.6.3 lxml==4.6.3 --force-reinstall
pip install --no-binary xmlsec==1.3.13 xmlsec==1.3.13
pip install --no-binary signxml==3.2.2 signxml==3.2.2

[buddhi-vamsi13]

Thanks for the help. I realized I was restricting all packages except xmlsec. I restricted to an earlier version and it now works. Looks like python3-saml was installing the latest xmlsec and that was causing the mismatch.

Hi,

we have the similiar issue can you provide us the version which u have mentioned

[eliasmazur]

For the libxml in Dockerfile:
RUN apt-get install -y libxml2-dev=2.9.4+dfsg1-6.1ubuntu1.9 libxmlsec1-dev=1.2.25-1build1

For the lxml and xmlsec in requirements.txt:
lxml==4.9.3
xmlsec==1.3.13

Hope this helps.

[sergei-maertens]

Would this mean that a new release/wheel is needed also built with libxml2@2.12.7? I was very excited about being able to install binary wheels again with xmlsec 1.3.14, but it seems that a patch release of libxml broke that again?

[sergei-maertens]

@eliasmazur I have the same use case as you with python3-saml. Based on what @andersk said, I've restricted the package version of LXML like so

lxml >= 4.6.5, !=4.7.0, <=5.2.1 

My build is working again now.

Trying this, the problem is not solved for us:

defusedxml==0.7.1
et-xmlfile==1.1.0
lxml==5.2.1
lxml_html_clean==0.1.1
xmlsec==1.3.14
xmltodict==0.12.0

still produces the uwsgi startup crash, while a normal python interpreter is fine (just as reported in the initial description). I have tried uwsgi 2.0.23 and 2.0.26 so far.

Making sure that libxml2-dev is NOT present in the system packages when uwsgi is being installed/built resolves the issue.