Install python 2.6 in CentOS

wget python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/Python-2.6.6.tgz then ./configure them make altinstall



Chris Lea provides a YUM repository for python26 RPMs that can co-exist with the 'native' 2.4 that is needed for quite a few admin tools on CentOS.
Quick instructions that worked at least for me:

$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://yum.chrislea.com/centos/5/i386/chl-release-5-3.noarch.rpm
$ sudo rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CHL
$ sudo yum install python26
$ python26

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.6/Python-2.6.6.tgz
tar -zxvf Python-2.6.6.tgz
cd Python-2.6.6
./config && make && make install

Add the install path (/usr/local/bin/python : by default) to ~/.bash_profile
It will not break yum or any other things which are dependent on python24.