[Distutils] find_on_path permission denied

[Dave Grote]

Hello All,
  I am using a package (scipy) that makes use of pkg_resources, and I am 
getting the following error during the import...

 >>> from scipy import optimize
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.5/site-packages/scipy/__init__.py", line 18, 
in <module>
    import pkg_resources as _pr # activate namespace packages 
(manipulates __path__)
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg/pkg_resources.py", 
line 2470, in <module>
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg/pkg_resources.py", 
line 343, in __init__
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg/pkg_resources.py", 
line 358, in add_entry
  File 
"/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg/pkg_resources.py", 
line 1577, in find_on_path
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/work/home/dave/scriptsnew'

This error is similar to the error reported in 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2006-July/006551.html. In 
a response to that message, 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2006-July/006552.html, a 
comment was made that permission problems would be handled more 
gracefully. Has this not yet been implemented? I am using 
setuptools-0.6c3-py2.5.egg, python2.5 on FC7. This is of course easy 
enough for me to get around, but I thought this would be good to report.
   Dave