1.5. Python on RedHat Linux

Installing under UNIX-compatible operating systems such as Linux is easy if you're willing to install a binary package. Pre-built binary packages are available for most popular Linux distributions. Or you can always compile from source.

To install under RedHat Linux, you need to download the RPM from http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.3.2/rpms/ and install it with the rpm command.

Example 1.7. Installing on RedHat Linux 9

localhost:~$ su -
Password: [enter your root password]
[root@localhost root]# wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.3/rpms/redhat-9/python2.3-2.3-5pydotorg.i386.rpm
Resolving python.org... done.
Connecting to python.org[194.109.137.226]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 7,495,111 [application/octet-stream]
...
[root@localhost root]# rpm -Uvh python2.3-2.3-5pydotorg.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:python2.3              ########################################### [100%]
[root@localhost root]# python          1
Python 2.2.2 (#1, Feb 24 2003, 19:13:11)
[GCC 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits", or "license" for more information.
>>> [press Ctrl+D to exit]
[root@localhost root]# python2.3       2
Python 2.3 (#1, Sep 12 2003, 10:53:56)
[GCC 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits", or "license" for more information.
>>> [press Ctrl+D to exit]
[root@localhost root]# which python2.3 3
/usr/bin/python2.3
1 Whoops! Just typing python gives us the older version of Python, the one that was installed by default. That's not the one we wanted.
2 The newer version is called python2.3. You'll probably want to change the path on the first line of the example scripts to point to the newer version.
3 This is the complete path of the newer version of Python that we just installed. Use this on the #! line (the first line of each script) to ensure that scripts are running under the latest version of Python, and be sure to type python2.3 to get into the interactive shell.