Debugging the installation of my HMRC PAYE software wasn’t something I planned for my Saturday evening. But with the first payment of the new tax year due next week I thought I’d make a quick submission to get it out of the way before the bank holiday. But the transition to the new year didn’t go as smoothly as it could have.
The PC I use for administration of my PAYE software is running a 64 bit Trisquel Linux OS. On running the software it advised me to upgrade. However, after the upgrade, the software failed to open. Fortunately I had a backup, so I wasn’t overly worried. But I’d rather get it running again than attempt to restore it from a backup on another machine or OS.
Running the software from the command line produced a long list of django python errors, culminating in:
File "/home/teamcity/BuildAgent/work/92574102faf30229/src-copy/django/db/backends/sqlite3/base.py", line 35, in
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Error loading either pysqlite2 or sqlite3 modules (tried in that order): libsqlite3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
It seems that this upgrade of the HMRC software was now relying on a new library. I tried a number of library installations, but nothing seemed to satisfy the program. Then I vaguely recalled having to install some 32 bit library files to get it running initially. So with a little guesswork I was able to identify the missing library and install it:
sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-0:i386
If you use a 64 bit Linux to do your PAYE with HMRC software, and you’re getting a failure after upgrading, maybe the above will do the trick for you too.
Leave a Reply