libpython2.7.so, /usr/lib or /usr/lib64, Liquid error parsing markdown

[Nick Fenwick]

Hi all,

I'm a first time poster looking for guidance about what seems to be a 
configuration or packaging problem on my system. I'm running Octopress, 
a blogging framework in Ruby, which uses Liquid running via Python to 
parse some embedded code blocks into a pretty format.

Environment:
Fedora Core 16 - 3.3.2-6.fc16.x86_64
python-2.7.2-5.2.fc16.x86_64
ruby 1.9.2p320 (2012-04-20 revision 35421) [x86_64-linux]
rvm 1.13.0 (stable) by Wayne E. Seguin

Liquid failed out of the box with a codeblock that tried to use .html or 
.js suffixes, with a rather unhelpful error message in the blog post 
being formatted:

Liquid error: undefined method `Py_IsInitialized’ for 
RubyPython::Python:Module

Googling for this error led me to many other Octopress blogs (and 
others) with this error. They've deployed broken blog posts unwittingly 
(I hope).

I found that I have /usr/lib64/libpython2.7.so but nothing in /usr/lib. 
Some google results led me to try:

ln -s /usr/lib64/libpython2.7.so /usr/lib/libpython2.7.so

This immediately fixed the Liquid error, and I'm able to generate my 
blog, Liquid works. Hurrah.

I know very little about 64 bit packaging, whether this is likely to be 
a python packaging problem or something in Liquid, rubypython, ruby, or 
octopress that's failing to find the correct libpython2.7.so.

Where should I look next?

Thanks all
Nick