Work:Installing Python without Root Access

Login via SSH and enter the following commands:

wget -c http://python.org/ftp/python/2.6/Python-2.6.tar.bz2
tar -jxvf Python-2.6.tar.bz2
cd Python-2.6/
./configure --prefix=$HOME/python
make
make install
echo "PATH=$PATH:$HOME/python/bin" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Next, determine the path to the new Python binary:

echo $HOME/python/bin/python

You should see an output similar to:

/home/youruser/python/bin/python

In your python scripts, you shebang line will read:

/home/youruser/python/bin/python

Where /home/youruser is replaced with the output of:

echo $HOME

on the Bash prompt.