Install of Python2.4 on RHEL ES 4
 

Hell All,

I need to install python2.4 due to dependency issues. I'm running RHEL ES 4 on a dual processor x86_64 system. So I need to not override python2.3 due to some requirements of RHEL ... Python2.4 will need to coexist with python2.3.

Since RedHat doesn't think Python2.4 is stable (or for whatever reason), they have decided not to release an rpm of Python2.4. So I installed from source and I'm running into some trouble.

I did the folowing:
./configure --enable-unicode=ucs --prefix=/usr --exec-prefix=/usr
make
make altinstall

I would have expected the arch dependent lib files to go under /usr/lib64/Python2.4 , instead they were installed under /usr/lib/Python2.4 . Obvioulsy I need help with this. I heard that for RH9 there was a patch from RH needed to get the libs installed in the right place. Does anyone know of a patch for RHEL ES 4?

Second, I executed the following command in an attempt to build pysqlite:
cd /usr/local/src/pysqlite
python2.4 setup.py build

and I get the following traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "setup.py", line 24, in ?
import glob, os, re, sys
File "/usr/lib64/python2.3/glob.py", line 4, in ?
import fnmatch
File "/usr/lib64/python2.3/fnmatch.py", line 13, in ?
import re
File "/usr/lib64/python2.3/re.py", line 5, in ?
from sre import *
File "/usr/lib64/python2.3/sre.py", line 97, in ?
import sre_compile
File "/usr/lib64/python2.3/sre_compile.py", line 17, in ?
assert _sre.MAGIC == MAGIC, "SRE module mismatch"
AssertionError: SRE module mismatch

So what's basically happenening is that Python2.4 is looking for glob.py in /usr/lib64/python2.3 ... now WHY ON EARTH would it be looking in python2.3? The above test ran ok with python2.3 or python so that's good that the altinstall worked well (as far as not overwritting python2.3). Any ideas on how I can fix this so that python2.4 looks in the coprrect place?

Respectfully,
Christopher Taylor

First, you do not say why you need (or think you need) python 2.4, what dependency issues are you having problems with??? Are you attempting to install something from another distro or from someplace else??

Second, no reason to have both python 2.3 and 2.4 installed, 2.4 will build and install on RHEL4 64-bit. The hard part is getting the system 'updated' for python 2.4 usage (lots of work).

Third you really should learn to build rpm packages, RHEL4 is rpm based and it keeps the libs in the proper locations, download the src.rpm files a build from them. Red Hat does think python-2.4 is stable and will be be using python-2.4.3 with RHEL5. If your only dependency issues are pysqlite(really python-sqlite) then visit;

http://dag.wieers.com/packages/python-sqlite/

You might want to install and use yum and the rpmforge-release rpm packages for EL4, this way you get a step up one EL5 which will use yum as a replacement for up2date.

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#B
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/yum/

.