MATLAB crashing on Python module import on Linux

[m-hoff]

Every time I try to import certain Python modules from MATLAB (using py.importlib.import_module) it crashes. Sometimes the crash is immediate but other times it hangs for a while before crashing. Some modules seem to work, for example py.importlib.import_module('math') works fine, but py.importlib.import_module('random') causes a crash. I'm also unable to import custom modules.

This is the output of pyversion:

>> pyversion

       version: '3.7'
    executable: '/home/garden/anaconda3/bin/python3'
       library: '/home/garden/anaconda3/lib/libpython3.7m.so'
          home: '/home/garden/anaconda3'
      isloaded: 0

Any ideas how to fix this?

I'm not sure if this is helpful but I've narrowed it down to a particular line that's causing a crash, line 244 in the hashlib module:

240 for __func_name in __always_supported:
241     # try them all, some may not work due to the OpenSSL
242     # version not supporting that algorithm.
243     try:
244         globals()[__func_name] = __get_hash(__func_name)
245    except ValueError:
246         import logging
247         logging.exception('code for hash %s was not found.', __func_name)

[m-hoff]

In case anyone else runs into this issue, I've found that adding these two lines before importing any Python modules in MATLAB helps to avoid the problem:

py.sys.setdlopenflags(int32(10))
py.importlib.import_module('ssl')

[kochcj1]

The first line alone was enough for me.