Need help in installing new python version....
 

I am fairly new to linux so any help may have to be verbose descriptive.

I have to use redhat 8 because of c and fortran compiler dependancies... and am getting problems installing the python numeric rpm.

I am getting this error.. I understand I need to install a new version of python since Redhat 8.0 is version 2.2x ... so I have.

I downloaded version 2.4 from Active Python and installed it. The default location of the installation is /opt/ActivePython-2.4/bin so I used that.

Steps I have done:
I checked to see if there is an uninstall option in the redhat installation through grub... I cannot uninstall it this way since i do not have the option.

So

I renamed all of the executable python files to OLD_python.. etc in the usr/bin directory.
I have added an export command to the .bashrc file to add the /opt/... stuff to the env variables.
I added an alias to the /usr/bin directory named python to point to the new python executable in /opt/ActivePython/bin.

So when I open a shell and use python it grabs 2.4 and can execute commands on that python.

I don't know what python-base reffers to in the error message above. I do not know where to change it so it can default to the new 2.4. I also do not see why it would still see 2.2 installed since I have renamed the executables... and forwarded the executable link...

There are still a ton of python files in the /usr/lib/python2.2 and /usr/include/python2.2 directories I have not touched.... but I don't know if the RPM is refferencing these or not.


Any help would be very appreciated.


Thank you.

Robert

The problem is when you downloaded Active Python, you bypassed the RPM database. RPM isn't smart enough to know what you've installed from other (non-RPM) packages, so it thinks you still haven't installed it. You have two options:
1) download the python-base rpm for 2.3 or 2.4 directly from redhat (check ftp.redhat.com or a local mirror)
2) trust that the activestate version of python is installed correctly and override RPMs dependency check. I think you can do this by adding either --no-deps or --force to the RPM command line (I forget exactly - type 'man rpm' and have a read through for the various options).

I recommend the first course, especially since you said you're new to this and, while I am sure ActiveState's version is very good, most of Redhat's software will have been tested with the vanilla Python from www.python.org.