gdb-ia ImportError No module named site

I am porting legacy c applications from tru64 to LINUX.   I need to debug some of these codes and am stumbling along trying to understand the debuggers I can use.  I was told INTEL no longer uses idb, but gdb-ia.  I assume that's a gnu debugger used on an INTEL platform.

I have created a simple c application called Helloworld.   I want to debug the application.   When attempting to debug the simple application, the following occurs:

$>gdb-ia helloworld
$>ImportError: No module named site

or

$>gdb-ia /home/hdjm/project/hello/helloworld
$>ImportError: No module named site

I downloaded a gdb.pdf and searched for the error and got no hits.  Can anyone help with this?