Here is what I would do for RHEL4:
- use python 2.6, not 2.7, because the released numpy does not support 2.7 yet.
- build atlas 3.8.3 and lapack 3.1.1 by yourself: this is your core
issue here. Both lapack and atlas should be built with the -fPIC flag
on x86_64 arch (modify the make.inc in lapack to include -fPIC in OPT
and NOOPT flags, and add the option -Fa alg -fPIC when calling atlas
configure script)

David

I have built lapack and atlas per your instructions (using http://www.scipy.org/Installing_SciPy/Linux for reference).  I think this has been done successfully.  My first go at building Numpy was not successful, and I was wondering if perhaps I did a few things wrong.

At one point, the website I referenced above suggests that I can make shared libraries by doing

cd lib #to where the atlas libraries are

make shared  # for sequential libraries

make ptshared # for threaded libraries

I initially did both of these things, which I'm not sure is ok.  The above website also says "our atlas libraries should now be in the lib subdirectory of the current directory. You should copy them to some-place that you can tell site.cfg about."  So I copied the libraries using cp to /home/jhtu/local/lib.

The final thing I had to do was modify my site.cfg.  I had a few questions about this.  First of all, for my default paths, do I need to do

library_dirs = /usr/local/bin:/home/jhtu/local/lib

or just

library_dirs = /home/jhtu/local/lib

Finally, to specifiy the lapack libraries, there is a section like

[blas_opt]

libraries = f77blas,...

but also another choice

[blas_opt]

libraries=ptf77blas,...

I think this is related to the make shared vs make ptshared question above, but this is something I know nothing about.  I think these are the only things that could be causing my problems.