failed to patch module botocore

Question

I am getting the following error in my Lambda logs

```
failed to patch module botocore
```
Its a Flask app deployed using Zappa. Essentially following the instructions at 
* https://docs.aws.amazon.com/xray/latest/devguide/xray-sdk-python-patching.html
* https://docs.aws.amazon.com/xray/latest/devguide/xray-sdk-python-serverless.html

here is the code

```
import boto3
from aws_xray_sdk.ext.flask.middleware import XRayMiddleware
from aws_xray_sdk.core import patcher, xray_recorder
from aws_xray_sdk.core import patch_all
patch_all()
```

Modules installed are

```
aws-xray-sdk==2.11.0
boto3==1.26.69
botocore==1.29.69
```

It is successfully patching the requests package.

I want to try and resolve this as I believe my downstream calls to services like SSM and S3 are not being tracked in Xray.

Thanks for any help

Brettski-AWS · Answer

The patch process is **probably** (I'm taking a little bit of a guess here) trying to overwrite the `botocore` and `boto3` code in place. That's not going to work as a Lambda function can only write to `/tmp`. I'm not sure why the `requests` library is getting patched successfully - unless it is already at the version that you require.

Instead, consider creating a [Lambda Layer](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/configuration-layers.html) which contains the appropriate versions of the code that you need and then using that Layer with the Lambda function. This is the best solution if you have multiple functions using the same libraries.

You could also create [an archive of the entire function](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/python-package.html) which includes the libraries you need. This is good if you only have a single function.

Ideally, you don't want to patch at runtime as this will increase the cold start time of your function.

Antonio_Lagrotteria · Answer

Hi,

Does it help if you add import botocore at the top of your code?

failed to patch module botocore

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