strange problem with os.getlogin

[Michele Simionato]

I am having a strange issue with os.getlogin on Mandrake 10:

$ python -c "import os; print os.getlogin()"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

On another linux machine (Debian) instead it works as expected.
For the moment I am using os.popen("whoami").read() which works
but it is an hack :-( 
Does anybody have an idea of the source of the problem?


          Michele Simionato