On linux SUSE or RedHat, how do I load Python 2.7

Question

Can someone provide the steps needed to install python version 2.7 on SUSE and RedHat? It version that is on there is like 2.4 and I need to have it at at least 2.6 to make my script work. So after the install, I can type Python in a xTerm and get the Python 2.7 command line interface.

Solution 1

Instructions to download source and install:

https://www.python.org/download/

NOTE: You should check for the latest version of python 2.7.x, as it gets updated frequently. Currently (Oct 2017), the latest version is 2.7.14 though this comment will get old and new versions likely will be released every 6 months or so.

wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.14/Python-2.7.14.tgz # Download
tar xvfz Python-2.7.14.tgz # unzip
cd Python-2.7.14 # go into directory
./configure
make # build
su # or 'sudo su' if there is no root user
make altinstall

(EDIT: make install -> make altinstall per Ignacio's comment).

Solution 2

The accepted answer by dr jimbob (using make altinstall) got me most of the way there, with python2.7 in /usr/local/bin but I also needed to install some third party modules. The nice thing is that easy_install gets its installation locations from the version of Python you are running, but I found I still needed to install easy_install for Python 2.7 otherwise I would get ImportError: No module named pkg_resources. So I did this:

wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.7/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
sudo -i
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
exit

Now I have easy_install and easy_install-2.7 in /usr/local/bin and the former overrides my system's 2.6 version of easy_install, so I removed it:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/easy_install

Now I can install libraries for the 2.7 version of Python like this:

sudo /usr/local/bin/easy_install-2.7 numpy

Solution 3

To install Python 2.7.2 use this script - https://github.com/bngsudheer/bangadmin/blob/master/linux/centos/6/x86_64/build-python-27.sh

It also makes sure you get sqlite and readline support.

Solution 4

You have to leave Python 2.4 installed on RHEL/Centos; otherwise, tools start breaking. You can do a dual-install, though; I talk about this here:

http://thebuild.com/blog/2009/10/17/wordpress-to-djangopostgresql-part-3-installing-apache-python-2-6-psycopg2-and-mod_wsgi/

The post is about 2.6, but applies equally to 2.7.

Solution 5

Execute the below commands to make yum work as well as python2.7

yum groupinstall -y development
yum groupinstall -y 'development tools'
yum install -y zlib-dev openssl-devel wget sqlite-devel bzip2-devel
yum -y install gcc gcc-c++ numpy python-devel scipy git boost*
yum install -y *lapack*
yum install -y gcc gcc-c++ make bison flex autoconf libtool memcached libevent libevent-devel uuidd libuuid-devel  boost boost-devel libcurl-dev libcurl curl gperf mysql-devel

cd
mkdir srk
cd srk 
wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.6/Python-2.7.6.tar.xz
yum install xz-libs
xz -d Python-2.7.6.tar.xz
tar -xvf Python-2.7.6.tar
cd Python-2.7.6
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make altinstall



echo "export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"" >> /etc/profile
source /etc/profile
mv /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python.bak
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2.6 1
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/local/bin/python2.7 2
update-alternatives --config python
sed -i "s/python/python2.6/g" /usr/bin/yum

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