ImportError: cannot import name _server

Describe the bug

When running rqd or other modules that use rqutil a import error will occur.

2019-08-19 16:12:38,016 WARNING   rqd3-rqd        RQD Starting Up
2019-08-19 16:12:38,019 WARNING   rqd3-rqcore     Nimby startup has been disabled via OVERRIDE_NIMBY
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "rqd/0.2.65/bin/rqd", line 166, in <module>
  File "rqd/0.2.65/bin/rqd", line 162, in main
  File "rqd/0.2.65/python/rqd/rqcore.py", line 582, in start
  File "rqd/0.2.65/python/rqd/rqnetwork.py", line 201, in start_grpc
  File "rqd/0.2.65/python/rqd/rqnetwork.py", line 162, in __init__
  File "grpcio/1.22.0/platform-linux/arch-x86_64/python-2.7/python/grpc/__init__.py", line 1843, in server
ImportError: cannot import name _server

To Reproduce

I’ve seen this behaviour is both our rez install and in a virtualenv install.

Expected behavior

If comment out rqutil.permissionsLow() from rqd.__main__ it works correctly.

[donalm]

I think Lars has identified the problem. When rqd starts up it prints a warning:

WARNING: This executable will drop privileges and run as the 'daemon' user.
         If your development environment cannot be accessed by the 'daemon'
         user, you may get unexpected ImportErrors

I guess it’s just a permission error, so for example even this should fail:

sudo -u daemon cat grpcio/1.22.0/platform-linux/arch-x86_64/python-2.7/python/grpc/_server.py

Not related to the proto compiler version or anything too esoteric I think.

[simonlvr]

I managed to run the sudo -u daemon cat from the site-packages folder on _server.py but I’m still getting the same error message unfortunately.