[FIXED] /usr/bin/python: bad interpreter: No such file or directory after installing python 2.7

Issue

I have python3 installed on Ubuntu 20.04, and I have an application that needs python 2.7 installed. After installation of python 2.7 it looks like python cannot be found

 /usr/bin/python: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

which python, which python2 and which python3 do not return any results

Here's the content of /usr/bin:

root@ip-10-10-10-201:/home/ubuntu# ls -alh /usr/bin/pyt*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    9 Mar 13  2020 /usr/bin/python2 -> python2.7
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.5M Aug  4 11:16 /usr/bin/python2.7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    9 Mar 13  2020 /usr/bin/python3 -> python3.8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   16 Mar 13  2020 /usr/bin/python3-config -> python3.8-config
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5.3M Jul 28 12:59 /usr/bin/python3.8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   33 Jul 28 12:59 /usr/bin/python3.8-config -> x86_64-linux-gnu-python3.8-config

I'm not sure how to get this working, if I need both pythons (2.7 and 3.8) to be working. Should I change the #!/usr/bin/python in the scripts that require phyton2 to #!/usr/bin/python2 ?

Will appreciate your help. Happy holidays!

Solution

As suggested by @ForceBru, changing the scripts from /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python2 seems to work.

This is due to the fact that Ubuntu Python packages are always coming as python2 and python3, not python.

Answered By - igalsc