I think this might be related to an issue I just discovered.
When trying to install a plugin I got the exact same error. I investigated the debug log output, this is the interesting line:
14:50:08 T:2877234064 M:863309824 DEBUG: Process - Setting the Python path to /home/xbmc/.xbmc/plugins/programs/Launcher:/usr/share/xbmc/system/python/python24.zip;/usr/share/xbmc/system/python/lib/python24.zip;/usr/share/xbmc/system/python/lib/python2.4/;/usr/share/xbmc/system/python/lib/python2.4/plat-linux2;/usr/share/xbmc/system/python/lib/python2.4/lib-tk;/usr/share/xbmc/system/python/lib/python2.4/lib-dynload
Look carefully, the first path separator is wrong! ':' vs ';'
I have tracked the bug to this file:
http://trac.xbmc.org/browser/trunk/XBMC/...Thread.cpp
But can't go any further since I'm not familiar with the codebase. Line 163 is where the message is from.
Looks like I'm on revision 19455, the file I point to has not changed since 19054, but the error may be elsewhere.
<pre>
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: Starting XBMC, Platform: GNU/Linux. Built on May 31 2009 (SVN:19455)
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: special://xbmc/ is mapped to: /usr/share/xbmc
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: special://masterprofile/ is mapped to: /home/xbmc/.xbmc/userdata
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: special://home/ is mapped to: /home/xbmc/.xbmc
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: special://temp/ is mapped to: /home/xbmc/.xbmc/temp
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: The executable running is: /usr/share/xbmc/xbmc.bin
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: Log File is located: /home/xbmc/.xbmc/temp/xbmc.log
14:24:09 T:3053184880 M:909758464 NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>
Hope this helps.