[Mailman-Users] Problem with ./configure to install Mailman

[Simon White]

04-Dec-03 at 10:09, Brent Shafer (brent_s at treca.org) wrote :
> I'm just starting out with Mailman and have limited experience with 
> Linux.
> When I attempt to configure the Mailman installation, I get the 
> following message:
> 
> [mailman at localhost Mailman]$ cd mailman-2.1.3
> [mailman at localhost mailman-2.1.3]$ ./configure
> checking for --with-python... no
> checking for python... /usr/bin/python
> checking Python interpreter... /usr/bin/python
> checking Python version... 2.2.1
> checking that Python has a working distutils... configure: error:
> 
> ***** Distutils is not available or is incomplete for /usr/bin/python
> ***** If you installed Python from RPM (or other package manager)
> ***** be sure to install the -devel package, or install Python
> ***** from source.  See README.LINUX for details
> 
> Python is installed on my RedHat Linux 8.0 server, but how do I get the 
> distutils to work properly?
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Check, like it says, if you have the python-devel package installed.
RedHat may not have it. You will need it for Mailman.

# rpm -q python-devel

if memory serves, is the command you need. If it doesn't print anything
as output, then you need to find the -devel RPM of the same version of
Python that you have and install it. That means if you have

python-2.2.1-17.i386.rpm

then you need

python-devel-2.2.1-17.i386.rpm

(these are the stock RH8.0 RPMs for Python)

TIP:

you could do this:

# rpm -qa | grep python

to find all python related RPMs installed. If
python-devel-2.2.1-17.i386.rpm isn't among them, then you need to
install it.

Regards,

-- 
Simon White. Internet Consultant, Linux/Windows Server Administration.
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