"Fatal Python error: (pygame parachute) Segmentation Fault"

Pig on 2009/09/07 19:02 of self is None

I'm posting this fix in case others have run into the same (or similar) problem.
I don't know if my own game has this issue or not but I ran into it quite a bit in other games.

The problem:
At some (early) point, the game exits with
Fatal Python error: (pygame parachute)
Segmentation Fault

Quick fix
Find a copy of freesansbold.ttf and copy it to the pygame directory. Mine was in /path-to-pygame-source/lib

My system:
Ubuntu 8.04, originally with pygame 1.7.1release
But this problem arise when I built pygame 1.9.1release from source.

How I built pygame 1.9.1 (because I might have done it wrong and maybe that is why I have this problem.)
Downloaded pygame-1.9.1release.tar.gz
Got all the SDL dependencies through "apt-get install".
tar xzvf pygame-1.9.1release.tar.gz
cd pygame-1.9.1release
python setup.py build (because I wanted to keep v1.7.1)
cd /path-to-game/
ln -s /somepath/pygame-1.9.1release/build/lib.linux-i686-2.5/pygame pygame
python run_game.py

How the bug was found:
Using pdb and "step", a lot.

What the source of the problem seems to be:
First, it seems that freesansbold.ttf is not copied from pygame-1.9.1release/lib to pygame-1.9.1release/build/lib.linux-i686-2.5

Second, it seems that the file is actually found (without copying) but then the wrong directory is appended to its path before loading so that the "File not found" error is not triggered but an error occurs when pygame/freesansbold.ttf is loaded.