I have searched a lot and somehow most of the places, its suggested that you install python using a python27 code base. For a new linux user this is a big task to get python build working with all the dependencies.
Before starting I want to state that I have no relation with the repository owners whose yum repo I am advising to use. It just helped me get things sorted out fast.
So first thing to install any package using yum, you will need your system to configure the yum repository.
Following steps demonstrates how to add the repository. Here we will use repository from PUIAS computational.
To add a yum repo or install a package using YUM you have to a root user
To become a root user in terminal run the following command
sudo su -
then to add a reposiroty to your system
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
create a new file here with name puias.repo
vi puias.repo
Add following content to the file
[PUIAS_6_computational]
name=PUIAS computational Base $releasever - $basearch
mirrorlist=http://puias.math.ias.edu/data/puias/computational/$releasever/$basearch/mirrorlist
#baseurl=http://puias.math.ias.edu/data/puias/computational/$releasever/$basearch
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-puias
save and exit the file
If you want to disable gpgcheck you can set value to 0 in above file.
To have gpg file installed run following commands
cd /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/
wget -q http://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/6/x86_64/os/RPM-GPG-KEY-puias
rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-puias
Now to install python packages
yum install python27 python27-tools python27-setuptools python27-devel
There you go, you have installed python27 installed in /usr/bin
If you want to make python27 default on your system then following steps will help
rm /usr/bin/python
ln -s /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python
Doing this above operation will break yum installation with error saying no module named yum.
I did not do enough research on installing yum module but I just changed the python interpreter in
/usr/bin/yum
vi /usr/bin/yum
Changed the first line from /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python2.6
Now your system should work fine.
