# Problems with lxml (local install)
**URL:** https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305
**Category:** Users Mailing List Archive
**Tags:** archive
**Created:** [April 20, 2014, 1:28pm UTC](https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305 "2014-04-20T13:28:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Martin\_Gal](https://discourse.obspy.org/u/Martin_Gal)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2014, 1:28pm UTC](https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305/1 "2014-04-20T13:28:54Z")
Hi Obspy team, I want to run Obspy on a machine where I do not have root access and the server is behind a firewall. I am quite limited with the install options and I used easy\_install as pip is broken with some SSL error. I can compile all dependencies but when I try to import the obspy package I get the following error: Python 2.7.5 (default, Apr 17 2014, 09:21:05) [GCC 4.1.2 20070115 (SUSE Linux)] on linux2 Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information. \>\>\> import lxml \>\>\> import obspy Traceback (most recent call last): File “”, line 1, in File “/u/mgal/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/obspy-0.9.0-py2.7-linux-x86\_64.egg/obspy/ **init**.py”, line 38, in from obspy.station import read\_inventory # NOQA File “/u/mgal/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/obspy-0.9.0-py2.7-linux-x86\_64.egg/obspy/station/ **init**.py”, line 8, in from obspy.station.inventory import Inventory, read\_inventory File “/u/mgal/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/obspy-0.9.0-py2.7-linux-x86\_64.egg/obspy/station/inventory.py”, line 17, in from obspy.station.stationxml import SOFTWARE\_MODULE, SOFTWARE\_URI File “/u/mgal/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/obspy-0.9.0-py2.7-linux-x86\_64.egg/obspy/station/stationxml.py”, line 14, in from lxml import etree ImportError: /u/mgal/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lxml-3.3.5-py2.7-linux-x86\_64.egg/lxml/etree.so: undefined symbol: clock\_gettime I tracked the error down to be a problem with the recent gcc compiler. Apparently someone wrote a fix for it ([Client Challenge](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/z3c.recipe.staticlxml)). With my unix knowledge I am not able to perform this fix as the documentation is not sufficient for me. Is there any other way I could solve this issue? I am only using the obspy.core.read function maybe I can install that separately without the need of lxml? Than you very much, best regards, Martin
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### Author:  [@Leonardo\_Uieda](https://discourse.obspy.org/u/Leonardo_Uieda)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2014, 6:24pm UTC](https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305/2 "2014-04-20T18:24:29Z")
Hi Martin,
Have you tried using the Anaconda python distribution? It replaces your system python and doesn’t require admin rights. It comes with lxml and I think most other obspy dependencies. Might be easier than patching lxml yourself.
Regards
Leo
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### Author:  [@Martin\_Gal](https://discourse.obspy.org/u/Martin_Gal)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305/3 "2014-04-21T03:56:25Z")
Hi Leo,
first of all sorry for the horribly formated message, something went wrong with my webmail. Thanks for the idea with anaconda, sadly I can not extract it on the server (ERROR: could not extract tar starting at line 455), I tried it also with virtualenv but same result, so I probably will have to wait for the server admin to return from his vacation.
Cheers,
Martin
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### Author:  [@Leonardo\_Uieda](https://discourse.obspy.org/u/Leonardo_Uieda)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305/4 "2014-04-23T15:20:53Z")
Hi Martin, that is very strange. Have you tried contacting the people at Continuum? They’re very friendly.
Good luck.
Leo
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### Author:  [@Martin\_Gal](https://discourse.obspy.org/u/Martin_Gal)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2014, 1:12am UTC](https://discourse.obspy.org/t/problems-with-lxml-local-install/305/5 "2014-04-24T01:12:12Z")
Hi Leo,
yes I have but no solution for it. I pretty much gave up as the server seems to be broken beyond repair… I am encountering errors which are mind boggling 🙂 .
Anyway, thanks for the help. I will try to find another solution.
Cheers,
Martin