So I recently reformatted my laptop and I wanted to checkout one of our BZR repositories so I could get some work done. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the bzr checkout command kept spitting back this error:
bzr: ERROR: Generic bzr smart protocol error: Invalid http response for https://<url removed>/.bzr/smart: Unknown response code 401
After much fiddling with the server and my local settings (yes the username and password were correct) I stumbled upon the most bazaar solution. Running:
$sudo apt-get remove python-pycurl
Solved all my problems and I was able to perform a successful checkout.