I am on a Cent OS shared system (i.e. I don't have root) with python 2.4 and am having trouble setting up setuptools in a virtual environment. I start by setting up the virtual environment: $/usr/bin/python2.4 virtual-python.py --prefix=~/apps/python Creating /fslhome/ddw28/apps/python/lib/python2.4 Creating /fslhome/ddw28/apps/python/lib/python2.4/site-packages Creating /fslhome/ddw28/apps/python/include/python2.4 Creating /fslhome/ddw28/apps/python/bin Copying /usr/bin/python2.4 to /fslhome/ddw28/apps/python/bin You're now ready to download ez_setup.py, and run /fslhome/ddw28/apps/python/bin/python ez_setup.py then I add "~/apps/python/bin" to my PATH and run the setup script with the following errors $ sh setuptools-0.6c9-py2.4.egg error: can't create or remove files in install directory The following error occurred while trying to add or remove files in the installation directory: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/test-easy-install-5267.write-test' The installation directory you specified (via --install-dir, --prefix, or the distutils default setting) was: /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ ... I get the right answer when I run which: $ which python ~/apps/python/bin/python I also created a symlink ~/apps/python/bin/python2.4 -> ~/apps/python/bin/python and get the same errors (this fixed a similar problem I had before on a different machine). Can anybody think of what might be going wrong? Thanks, dan