Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Python on cesnos 5.2

[antsaoo]

Hello i have been thinking of getting dedicated server and was wondering is it easy to install python on CentOS or is it already installed ? Maybe stupid question but better safe than sorry

[e-Sensibility]

Don't know much about CentOS, but I'd imagine that it doesn't come with python. I would also venture to say that it should be pretty straight forward to compile python from source, or to do a binary installation via CentOS's package management system.

[mwatkins]

Python is easy to install from source. I don't know CentOS (Two thumbs up for FreeBSD and reluctantly support Debian here) but no doubt its "package" manager has an install available.

It may however be for a dated version.

If you aren't running a "control panel" then chances are you can install or upgrade to the latest mainstream Python (2.6). I would not advise installing Python 3.0 unless you know what you are doing as it intentionally breaks some links to the past (all for good reasons).

If your box has Python 2.5x on it, and you don't have any special requirements otherwise, just use that.

Compiling from source, if you feel so inclined:

./configure
make
sudo make install

(or sudo make fullinstall - again, know what you are doing)

[transcend]

Originally Posted by antsaoo

Hello i have been thinking of getting dedicated server and was wondering is it easy to install python on CentOS or is it already installed ? Maybe stupid question but better safe than sorry

Cent comes with python out of the box.

[RoseHosting]

You can check if the Python package is already installed with the 'rpm -qa | grep python' command.

If it isn't installed then try 'yum install python' to install it.

[mwatkins]

Originally Posted by transcend

Cent comes with python out of the box.

Figured it would; many packages require Python for their install scripts, and most hosts have at least check box support for it.

To the OP, check what version is installed. You don't want anything older than 2.5.x.

python --version

[Zoni]

yum itself runs on Python, if I remember right... so I would think it does

[transcend]

Originally Posted by mwatkins

Figured it would; many packages require Python for their install scripts, and most hosts have at least check box support for it.

To the OP, check what version is installed. You don't want anything older than 2.5.x.

python --version

Yum is actually a python script, as Webbify noted.

The stock version on Cent5 is 2.4.3, which is rather dated.

Once thing to note is that Cent/RHEL tend to be finicky about python and perl versions, and many of their administrative packages and scripts depend on them. If a newer version is required, I'd recommend installing a second copy to /usr/local (you should just be able to ./configure prefix=/usr/local && make && make install IIRC) to ensure that there is no impact to the base OS. You may also need to rebuild mod_python if you want to serve content that way (you can just grab the .src rpm and edit the paths to reflect the new python install, rpmbuild -bb, install rpm and you're done).

Hope this is helpful!

[mwatkins]

Originally Posted by transcend

If a newer version is required, I'd recommend installing a second copy to /usr/local (you should just be able to ./configure prefix=/usr/local && make && make install IIRC)

You shouldn't need to jump through those hoops. As any Python README will note, you have choices:

make install - generally clobbers an existing installation
make altinstall - will not clobber

The executable is what really matters. If centos in its wisdom requires Python 2.4.x for some reason, you don't want to override that. But I would not personally use 2.4 myself, preferring features and speed improvements available in more recent versions.

make altinstall will put Python where it should go for that platform, but it won't over-write the already installed "system" python executable but instead will deposit a python2.x executable.

It should be quite safe installing a newer major version of Python. For example if your OS has Python:

/usr/local/bin/python -- 2.4.3

It's libraries will typically be at:

/usr/local/lib/python2.4/

Thus if you make altinstall 2.5 or 2.6:

/usr/local/bin/python -- 2.4.3 (not affected)
/usr/local/bin/python2.6 -- the new executable

And libraries:
/usr/local/lib/python2.4/ -- 2.4.3 not affected
/usr/local/lib/python2.6/ -- the new libraries.

Living with multiple versions isn't that troublesome but you will have to think about it a bit. When installing your own apps you'll want to take care to use the newer Python, i.e.:

python2.6 setup.py install

That all said, unless you really need a feature in later versions, most machine's stock version will do, particularly for the newcomer or casual punter.