[Tutor] alternative Python 2.6 install?

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl at yahoo.com>
> To: Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl at yahoo.com>; Python Tutor Mailing List <tutor at python.org>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Friday, October 10, 2014 1:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [Tutor] alternative Python 2.6 install?
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> 
>>  From: Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl at yahoo.com.dmarc.invalid>
>>  To: Python Tutor Mailing List <tutor at python.org>
>>  Cc: 
>>  Sent: Thursday, October 9, 2014 8:32 PM
>>  Subject: [Tutor] alternative Python 2.6 install?
>> 
>>  Hi,
>> 
>> 
>>  I need to install Python 2.6 on my Debian system to check some code.*) What 
> is 
>>  the easiest way to do this? Simply "sudo apt-get install 
> python2.6"? I 
>>  know I can also compile it and then do make altinstall, but I prefer 
> apt-get. I 
>>  am kinda paranoid that I might accidentally change my system Python 
> version.
> 
> 
> Ok, I decided to take the altinstall route anyway. I am now a getting message 
> 'failed to find necessary bits to build these modules', even though  I 
> did install a whole bunch of packages (zlib1g is the first one that causes 
> problems). Does anyone know how to solve this? I don't understand why e.g. 
> 'zlib' still is missing while I clearly installed it!
> 
> Alternatively: which Ubuntu (or Debian) version was the last version to use 
> Python 2.6? I could simply install it in VirtualBox... Lame, but I am in kind of 
> a hurry.
> 
> 
> This is what I did (outcommented lines are what won't work, or commands that 
> are pointless at this point):
> 
> sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev libbz2-dev libgdbm-dev libncurses5-dev 
> tk-dev zlib1g-dev
> wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.8/Python-2.6.8.tgz
> tar -zxvf Python-2.6.8.tgz 
> cd Python-2.6.8/
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
> make  # [a] see 'failed stuff' below
> #sudo make altinstall  
> #mkvirtualenv -p /usr/local/bin/python2.6 python26  # ImportError: No module 
> named zlib
> #workon python26
> #pip install mysql-python


The first of the symlinks solved the zlib problem. The there was a problem with _sha256... 


ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /lib/libz.so

ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libssl.so /lib/libssl.so
ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt.so /lib/libcrypt.so
ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so /lib/libcrypto.so
ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so /lib/libbz2.so
ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdbm.so /lib/libgdbm.so
ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcurses.so /lib/libcurses.so
ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so /lib/libsqlite3.so

OK, I gave up. I used Vagrant to install a Ubuntu 10.0.4 LTS virtualbox (which has Python 2.6 by default). Now I can SSH to that machine and do whatever I want. Sheesh. I am *still* very much interested to hear what might have gone wrong, though.

Albert-Jan