Installing Python 2.7 on Centos 6.5

url: https://gist.github.com/dalegaspi/dec44117fa5e7597a559

Centos 6.* comes with Python 2.6, but we can't just replace it with v2.7 because it's used by the OS internally (apparently) so you will need to install v2.7 (or 3.x, for that matter) along with it. Fortunately, CentOS made this quite painless with their Software Collections Repository

sudo yum update # update yum
sudo yum install centos-release-scl # install SCL 
sudo yum install python27 # install Python 2.7

To use it, you essentially spawn another shell (or script) while enabling the newer version of Python:

scl enable python27 bash

To install additional libraries, you will need to install PIP:

cd /opt/rh/python27/root/usr/bin/ # cd to the directory where SCL installs python
sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./easy_install-2.7 pip

once installed, you can install PIP using pip2.7, e.g.:

sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./pip2.7 install requests 

NOTE: if your username doesn't require root to install software, then LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH is set up for you automatically by scl. Also keep in mind that using SCL outside a shell (e.g., cronjobs) isn't quite straightforward. Also, using virtualenv poses a challenge as well.

codeAshu commented on 20 Mar 2016

Did you miss yum install -y python27

crayzeewulf commented on 16 Jun 2016

As @codeAshu mentioned, I had to use slightly modified instructions to install Python 2.7. Please see the updated gist in this fork and the differences here. Feel free to merge it.

Owner

dalegaspi commented on 27 Jun 2016

i didn't see these messages (there should be notifications support for gists...) until i randomly wandered into this specific gist...thanks @crayzeewulf...i've merged your changes.

MarcGodard commented on 25 Mar 2017 • 

edited 

Getting error: Not a recognized archive type: pip on step sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./easy_install-2.7 pip However, it is working so it looks like it is already there.

sonicwong commented on 19 Jun 2017

same here, got error in last step: [root@server bin]# sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./easy_install-2.7 pip /opt/rh/python27/root/usr/bin/python2: error while loading shared libraries: libpython2.7.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

cbsdtools commented on 14 Sep 2017

I received the same error as @sonicwong

alanthing commented on 19 Sep 2017

@cbsdtools and @sonicwong -- try this instead: Because the python27 SCL comes via the centos-release-scl-rh package, you can install pip with: yum install python27-python-pip. If it may be helpful to know more about how to use SCLs, here is how the command from @sonicwong would be run with all of the proper environment variables set: scl enable python27 "easy_install-2.7 pip" scl enable python27 cmd will effectively source the contents of /opt/rh/python27/enable before running the cmd. If the command has arguments, you can wrap it in quotes. Alternatively, by running scl enable python27 bash, you can jump into a new bash session with PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, MANPATH, XDG_DATA_DIRS, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH to run multiple consecutive commands without the scl enable prefixes .

JSoet commented on 2 Oct 2017 • 

edited 

When running pip I ran into a problem with permissions, it gave me this error any time I tried do any pip command: $ ./pip2.7 -V Traceback (most recent call last): File "./pip2.7", line 7, in <module> from pip import main File "/opt/rh/python27/root/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip/__init__.py", line 21, in <module> from pip._vendor.requests.packages.urllib3.exceptions import DependencyWarning ImportError: No module named requests.packages.urllib3.exceptions I found out that this was due to permissions problems on the lib folders. To fix it I had to add the read and execute permissions to the python lib and lib64 folders like: sudo chmod -R o+rx /opt/rh/python27/root/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages