How to Install Python 2.7 on CentOS/RHEL 9/8 and Fedora

By 3 Mins Read

In an era where Python 3 dominates the development landscape, certain legacy applications still require Python 2.7. However, newer distributions of Linux, such as CentOS/RHEL 9/8 and Fedora, come with Python 3 installed by default. This guide provides a step-by-step approach to installing Python 2.7 alongside the system’s default Python installation, ensuring your legacy applications continue to run smoothly without disrupting the system’s Python 3 environment.

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Preparing Your System

Before proceeding with the installation, ensure your system is up to date. Open a terminal and execute the following command:

sudo dnf update

This command ensures all your system’s packages are updated to their latest versions.

Step 1: Install Development Tools

Python 2.7 requires certain development tools and libraries to compile from source. Install them by running:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install openssl-devel bzip2-devel libffi-devel

Step 2: Download Python 2.7

Next, download the Python 2.7 source code from the official Python website. You can do this by navigating to https://www.python.org/downloads/source/ and downloading the latest Python 2.7.x version, or by using wget with the appropriate link. As of writing this guide, Python 2.7.18 is the latest version. You can download it using:

wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.18/Python-2.7.18.tar.xz

Extract the downloaded file:

tar -xf Python-2.7.18.tar.xz

Step 3: Compile Python Source

Navigate to the directory containing the extracted Python source code:

cd Python-2.7.18

Prepare the Python 2.7 source for compilation:

./configure --enable-optimizations --enable-shared LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath /usr/local/lib"

Compile and install Python 2.7:

make
sudo make altinstall

Using make altinstall instead of make install prevents replacing the default python command with Python 2.7. This way, Python 3 remains the default Python interpreter on your system.

Step 4: Verify the Installation

After the installation process is complete, verify it by checking the Python version:

python2.7 --version

You should see output similar to Python 2.7.18, indicating that Python 2.7 has been successfully installed.

Step 5: Setting up a Virtual Environment (Optional)

To isolate your Python 2.7 environment, it’s recommended to use virtualenv. First, install pip for Python 2.7:

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/pip/2.7/get-pip.py
sudo python2.7 get-pip.py

Then, install virtualenv:

sudo pip2.7 install virtualenv
Create a virtual environment for your project:


virtualenv -p /usr/local/bin/python2.7 venv

Activate the virtual environment:
source venv/bin/activate

Now, you're ready to work on your Python 2.7 project within an isolated environment.
Conclusion
Installing Python 2.7 on CentOS/RHEL 9/8 and Fedora systems allows you to run legacy Python applications without interfering with the system's default Python 3 environment. By following this guide, you can ensure compatibility with older software while benefiting from the security and features of modern Linux distributions. Remember to consider migrating your Python 2.7 applications to Python 3 to take advantage of the latest improvements and support.
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48 Comments

  1. lince on

    Seems like you’re missing “yum install make” as dependency too 🙂
    (at least i got an error in a centos 7 container)

    Reply
  2. Niculescu Tudor on

    Please note that the command
    curl “https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py” -o “get-pip.py”
    does not work anymore. User gets error
    curl: (35) Peer reports incompatible or unsupported protocol version.
    I think this error is given by the fact that the site “https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py” does not accept TLS version older than 1.2.
    Workaround was to give the command on a different machine that had TLS1.2 and copy the downloaded get-pip.py file from that machine to the CentOS machine on location /usr/src/Python-2.7.16
    after this step, give the last command from the webBlog.
    python2.7 get-pip.py

    Reply
  3. Alvaro Diaz on

    Please beware, this doesn’t work on Centos 7, make alt install will break default python 2.7.5 installation.

    Reply
  4. Beta on

    DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Please upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won’t btained after that date. A future version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.

    WHAT? when i type python -V im still on 2.6 then it say that

    Reply
  6. suchita on

    >>> import boto
    >>> boto.version
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “”, line 1, in
    AttributeError: ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘version’
    >>>

    how to fix this error

    Reply
  8. KB on

    Im getting this error, is there any way to bypass certificate checking?

    [root@localhost Python-2.7.15]# python2.7 get-pip.py
    DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Please upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won’t be maintained after that date. A future version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.
    Collecting pip
    Retrying (Retry(total=4, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by ‘SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)’: /simple/pip/
    Retrying (Retry(total=3, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by ‘SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)’: /simple/pip/
    Retrying (Retry(total=2, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by ‘SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)’: /simple/pip/
    Retrying (Retry(total=1, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by ‘SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)’: /simple/pip/
    Retrying (Retry(total=0, connect=None, read=None, redirect=None, status=None)) after connection broken by ‘SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)’: /simple/pip/
    Could not fetch URL https://pypi.org/simple/pip/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: HTTPSConnectionPool(host=’pypi.org’, port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/pip/ (Caused by SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)) – skipping
    Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pip (from versions: )
    No matching distribution found for pip
    Could not fetch URL https://pypi.org/simple/pip/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: HTTPSConnectionPool(host=’pypi.org’, port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /simple/pip/ (Caused by SSLError(SSLError(1, u'[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:618)’),)) – skipping

    Reply
  9. Jeremy on

    Works well with RHEL7. I was having issues installing Python 2.7.14 onto a RHEL7 system that had Python 2.7.5 as it’s native install.

    Your concise instructions helped show how “make altinstall” was the correct solution to avoid overwriting the native Python 2.7.5 install.

    Reply
  10. MarSoft on

    Two additions:

    1. altinstall role is not properly described. Altinstall means “don’t overwrite $PREFIX/bin/python symlink”; in our case system-default Python is installed under /usr/bin/python (PREFIX=/usr), while we install 2.7.14 Python under /usr/local/bin/python (PREFIX=/usr/local).
    So if we use `make install` then we will create `/usr/local/bin/python`, without overwriting `/usr/bin/python`. And `/usr/local/bin` has higher priority than `/usr/bin` resulting in new Python version being used for `python` command, and this may break some system-wide stuff. Although scripts with hard-coded `#!/usr/bin/python` in shebang will still use old python version.

    2. No need to download `get-pip.py` script because Python 2.7.14 has built-in `ensurepip` module. It is enough to enter `python2.7 -m ensurepip` to install pip.

    Reply
  13. rad on

    Any way I can make a binary i.e. rpm with this and then move it to prod? I don’t want to compile stuff on prod servers.

    Reply
  14. himanshu chauhan on

    python2.7 is not a valid command

    /usr/local/bin/python2.7 –version ,This path need to be added to PATH

    /usr/local/bin/python2.7 –version

    Reply
  16. Madhu on

    I am getting error in the last command python2.7 get-pip.py
    The following is the error msg
    [uexcel@localhost Python-2.7.13]$ python2.7 get-pip.py
    Collecting pip
    Using cached pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
    Collecting wheel
    Using cached wheel-0.29.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
    Installing collected packages: pip, wheel
    Exception:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/basecommand.py”, line 215, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/commands/install.py”, line 342, in run
    prefix=options.prefix_path,
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/req/req_set.py”, line 784, in install
    **kwargs
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/req/req_install.py”, line 851, in install
    self.move_wheel_files(self.source_dir, root=root, prefix=prefix)
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/req/req_install.py”, line 1064, in move_wheel_files
    isolated=self.isolated,
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/wheel.py”, line 345, in move_wheel_files
    clobber(source, lib_dir, True)
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/wheel.py”, line 316, in clobber
    ensure_dir(destdir)
    File “/tmp/tmpGCg2kV/pip.zip/pip/utils/__init__.py”, line 83, in ensure_dir
    os.makedirs(path)
    File “/usr/lib64/python2.7/os.py”, line 157, in makedirs
    mkdir(name, mode)
    OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: ‘/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip’
    [uexcel@localhost Python-2.7.13]$

    Reply
  20. Jeff Scott on

    python2.7 -V didn’t work. says cannot find it.

    I can run “python” from “/usr/src/Python2.7.13/” and I get the version 2.7.3 but running python2.7 does nothing.

    What went wrong? Do I need to run install-sh after doing the “make altinstall” command?

    Please help. I’m not familiar with Oracle Linux, I’m used to Ubuntu Server and I’m floundering a bit here.

    Reply
  23. Ashik on

    Your article helps me to install…

    After the installation we are getting the below error when we try to run a command,

    [root@earth home]# vdetect –reseller=xyz
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/web1] does not exist
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/krk.*.com] does not exist
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/home/cistrons/public_html/demo] does not exist
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/web1] does not exist
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/home/innosysc/public_html/demo] does not exist
    AH00548: NameVirtualHost has no effect and will be removed in the next release /etc/apache2/conf/httpd.conf:107656
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/paypal-singin] does not exist
    AH00112: Warning: DocumentRoot [/home/*/public_html/paypal-singin] does not exist
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “/root/bin/vdetect”, line 618, in
    signatures = ApplicationSignature.get_xml_signatures_from_url(opts.sigloc, opts.useragent)
    File “/root/bin/vdetect”, line 218, in get_xml_signatures_from_url
    return cls.get_xml_signatures_from_string(urllib2.urlopen(req).read())
    File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 154, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
    File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 429, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
    File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 447, in _open
    ‘_open’, req)
    File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 407, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
    File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 1228, in http_open
    return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
    File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py”, line 1198, in do_open
    raise URLError(err)
    urllib2.URLError:
    [root@earth home]#

    Reply
  24. Gaurav on

    It about Windows 7, It doesn’t have python 2.7 and I want to install python 2.7.13 first so how would I do this using batch file? Assume all setups are placed on common location.

    Reply
  26. Ashish on

    make altinstall command is failing with the following message:

    make: *** No rule to make target ‘altinstall’. Stop

    Reply
  28. jcheang on

    Hi,

    This works perfectly.
    Could you show how to install pyodbc to this python2.7 altinstall dir?
    By default running the pyodbc rpm, it gets install to the python 2.6 dir.

    Please advise. thanks.

    Reply
  32. NoMoBama on

    Just a heads up, if you are on centos/rhel 7, where python2.7.5 is the default, the altinstall option for any other python2.7 version (2.7.11 for instance) will break your installation as it writes to the same /usr/lib/python2.7 directory and destroys the yum modules. I am sure there is a way around this, but I just encountered this issue and it took rebuilding yum from a few RPMs just to get my system back to normal.

    Reply
    • aenagy on

      How did you fix this? Is this why pip will not install?

      # curl “https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py” -o “get-pip.py”
      % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
      Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
      100 1558k 100 1558k 0 0 1172k 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 –:–:– 1174k
      # python2.7 get-pip.py
      Traceback (most recent call last):
      File “get-pip.py”, line 20061, in
      main()
      File “get-pip.py”, line 194, in main
      bootstrap(tmpdir=tmpdir)
      File “get-pip.py”, line 82, in bootstrap
      import pip
      zipimport.ZipImportError: can’t decompress data; zlib not available
      [root@TOPLLHinf01 src]#

      Reply
  35. name on

    thanks, great work!

    just a question from a novice, how do i now -use- this altinstall instead of the standard version
    e.g. when running plexconnect.py?

    Reply
  36. unais on

    Hello Rahul,

    I have installed Python 2.7 on centos 5 from source code. Python 2.4 is already there in centos 5. Could you please help me to uninstall Python 2.7 so that I can reinstall it with yum.

    Thanks in advance

    Reply
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