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

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.

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).

RHEL 6.2 using (had Python 2.6, i need Python 2.7.3) So:

$ sudo sh -c 'wget -qO- http://people.redhat.com/bkabrda/scl_python27.repo >> /etc/yum.repos.d/scl.repo'

$ yum search python27
Loaded plugins: amazon-id, rhui-lb, security
scl_python27                                                                                                                                      | 2.9 kB     00:00     
scl_python27/primary_db                                                                                                                           |  38 kB     00:00     
========================================================================= N/S Matched: python27 =========================================================================
python27.i686 : Package that installs python27
python27.x86_64 : Package that installs python27
python27-expat-debuginfo.i686 : Debug information for package python27-expat
python27-expat-debuginfo.x86_64 : Debug information for package python27-expat
python27-python-coverage-debuginfo.i686 : Debug information for package python27-python-coverage
python27-python-coverage-debuginfo.x86_64 : Debug information for package python27-python-coverage
python27-python-debuginfo.i686 : Debug information for package python27-python
python27-python-debuginfo.x86_64 : Debug information for package python27-python
python27-python-markupsafe-debuginfo.i686 : Debug information for package python27-python-markupsafe
python27-python-markupsafe-debuginfo.x86_64 : Debug information for package python27-python-markupsafe
python27-python-simplejson-debuginfo.i686 : Debug information for package python27-python-simplejson
python27-python-simplejson-debuginfo.x86_64 : Debug information for package python27-python-simplejson
python27-python-sqlalchemy-debuginfo.i686 : Debug information for package python27-python-sqlalchemy
python27-python-sqlalchemy-debuginfo.x86_64 : Debug information for package python27-python-sqlalchemy
python27-runtime.i686 : Package that handles python27 Software Collection.
python27-runtime.x86_64 : Package that handles python27 Software Collection.
python27-babel.noarch : Tools for internationalizing Python applications
python27-build.i686 : Package shipping basic build configuration
python27-build.x86_64 : Package shipping basic build configuration
python27-expat.i686 : An XML parser library
python27-expat.x86_64 : An XML parser library
python27-expat-devel.i686 : Libraries and header files to develop applications using expat
python27-expat-devel.x86_64 : Libraries and header files to develop applications using expat
python27-expat-static.i686 : expat XML parser static library
python27-expat-static.x86_64 : expat XML parser static library
python27-python.i686 : An interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
python27-python.x86_64 : An interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
python27-python-babel.noarch : Library for internationalizing Python applications
python27-python-coverage.i686 : Code coverage testing module for Python
python27-python-coverage.x86_64 : Code coverage testing module for Python
python27-python-debug.i686 : Debug version of the Python runtime
python27-python-debug.x86_64 : Debug version of the Python runtime
python27-python-devel.i686 : The libraries and header files needed for Python development
python27-python-devel.x86_64 : The libraries and header files needed for Python development
python27-python-docutils.noarch : System for processing plaintext documentation
python27-python-jinja2.noarch : General purpose template engine
python27-python-libs.i686 : Runtime libraries for Python
python27-python-libs.x86_64 : Runtime libraries for Python
python27-python-markupsafe.i686 : Implements a XML/HTML/XHTML Markup safe string for Python
python27-python-markupsafe.x86_64 : Implements a XML/HTML/XHTML Markup safe string for Python
python27-python-nose.noarch : Discovery-based unittest extension for Python
python27-python-nose-docs.noarch : Nose Documentation
python27-python-pygments.noarch : Syntax highlighting engine written in Python
python27-python-setuptools.noarch : Easily build and distribute Python packages
python27-python-simplejson.i686 : Simple, fast, extensible JSON encoder/decoder for Python
python27-python-simplejson.x86_64 : Simple, fast, extensible JSON encoder/decoder for Python
python27-python-sphinx.noarch : Python documentation generator
python27-python-sphinx-doc.noarch : Documentation for python-sphinx
python27-python-sqlalchemy.i686 : Modular and flexible ORM library for python
python27-python-sqlalchemy.x86_64 : Modular and flexible ORM library for python
python27-python-test.i686 : The test modules from the main python package
python27-python-test.x86_64 : The test modules from the main python package
python27-python-tools.i686 : A collection of development tools included with Python
python27-python-tools.x86_64 : A collection of development tools included with Python
python27-python-virtualenv.noarch : Tool to create isolated Python environments
python27-python-werkzeug.noarch : The Swiss Army knife of Python web development
python27-python-werkzeug-doc.noarch : Documentation for python-werkzeug
python27-tkinter.i686 : A graphical user interface for the Python scripting language
python27-tkinter.x86_64 : A graphical user interface for the Python scripting language

  Name and summary matches only, use "search all" for everything.

EDIT:

CentOS 6.x: http://dev.centos.org/centos/6/SCL/x86_64/python27/

$ sudo sh -c 'wget -qO- http://dev.centos.org/centos/6/SCL/scl.repo >> /etc/yum.repos.d/scl.repo'
$ scl enable python27 'python --version'
python 2.7.5
$ scl enable python27 bash
$ python --version
Python 2.7.5

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

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.

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.

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

Great thing about linux, you're still able to download the source and on most systems have all of the tools to compile the version yourself.

In order to get a python cli from xterm just by typing python, the python bin directory must be in your system path variable (Red Hat example, Suse example)

If you can live with 2.6, http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL">EPEL</a> has it for RHEL 5 in the python26 package, although you will need to use python2.6 to invoke it since the system will still need python to be 2.4 in order to run.

If you need pip and setup tool , please install openssl and opessl-devl before making python2.7

 yum install openssl-devel

Then follow https://stackoverflow.com/a/4149444/429476

Then https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py
python2.7 ez_setup.py

Then to install pip

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
python2.7 get-pip.py

Then to install other packages pip2.7 install package_name

If you want to install Python 2.7 on Oracle Linux, you can proceed as follows:

Enable the Software Collection in /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol6.repo.

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol6.repo

[public_ol6_software_collections] 
name=Software Collection Library release 1.2 packages for Oracle Linux 6 
(x86_64) 
baseurl=[http://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL6/SoftwareCollections12/x86_64/][1] 
    gpgkey=file:[///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle][2] 
    gpgcheck=1 
    enabled=1 <==============change from 0 to 1

After making this change to the yum repository you can simply run the yum command to install the Python:

yum install gcc libffi libffi-devel python27 python27-python-devel openssl-devel python27-MySQL-python

edit bash_profile with follow variables:

vim ~/.bash_profile
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/opt/rh/python27/root/usr/bin export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/rh/python27/root/usr/lib64 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/rh/python27/root/usr/lib64/pkgconfig export PKG_CONFIG_PATH

Now you can use python2.7 and pip for install Python modules:

/opt/rh/python27/root/usr/bin/pip install pynacl
/opt/rh/python27/root/usr/bin/python2.7 --version

If you get an error when at the ./configure stage that says

> configure: error: in `/home//Downloads/Python-2.7.14': > configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

then try this.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19816275/no-acceptable-c-compiler-found-in-path-when-installing-python#19816655