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Yesterday I accidentally removed the python package using "yum remove" on a CentOS server. After then I realized yum was dependant on python and I could no longer use yum. I think I need to reinstall python to fix the problem. How can I do this without using yum?

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  • this is not a programming question
    – Ramchandra Apte
    Jul 22, 2012 at 9:35
  • you can compile Python from source if you have a compiler installed and make and autoconfigure
    – Ramchandra Apte
    Jul 22, 2012 at 9:37
  • You may find that your question gets better results on ServerFault =)
    – Katriel
    Jul 22, 2012 at 9:58

3 Answers 3

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10

I'm surprised you were able to remove the python package. It has so many dependencies on a RHEL/CentOS system, that there's a good chance you removed far more than python. Running yum remove python on one of my CentOS systems yields:

Dependencies Resolved

====================================================================================================================
 Package                                 Arch           Version                             Repository         Size
====================================================================================================================
Removing:
 python                                  x86_64         2.4.3-46.el5                        installed          72 k
Removing for dependencies:
 AcronisAgentLinux                       x86_64         41.0.16-1                           installed          13 M
 BackupAndRecoveryAgent                  x86_64         11.0.17318-1                        installed         154 M
 GConf2                                  i386           2.14.0-9.el5                        installed         4.6 M
 .
 .
 .
 yum-metadata-parser                     x86_64         1.1.2-3.el5.centos                  installed          55 k
 yum-security                            noarch         1.1.16-21.el5.centos                installed          60 k
 yum-updatesd                            noarch         1:0.9-2.el5                         installed          55 k
 yum-utils                               noarch         1.1.16-21.el5.centos                installed         194 k
 zsh                                     x86_64         4.2.6-6.el5                         installed         3.6 M

Transaction Summary
====================================================================================================================
Remove      493 Package(s)
Reinstall     0 Package(s)
Downgrade     0 Package(s)

Is this ok [y/N]: (Heck-no!)

Did you actually let the process remove hundreds of installed packages?

If you only removed a single package, you would need to download the python RPM for your particular version of CentOS. If this was CentOS version 5.8 on 64-bit, for instance, you'd find the current package name in the CentOS repository... Look for python-2.4.3-46.el5.x86_64.rpm

To install that particular package, use wget http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/centos/5.8/os/x86_64/CentOS/python-2.4.3-46.el5.x86_64.rpm to download the individual package. Use rpm -ivh python-2.4.3-46.el5.x86_64.rpm to actually install it with the RPM package manager.

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  • That surprised me as well. Here is what happened: - I got problems when I tried "yum update", mostly on python packages - I called yum remove python, and then I realized it had so many dependant packages and stopped uninstallation. - After then yum started failing because python was removed - I logged out of the server and couldn't connect ever again using SSH terminal as OpenSSL packages were dependant on python. I'm not a linux admin but I don't think an OS should let you remove python using yum (which is dependant on python).
    – Umit
    Jul 26, 2012 at 8:35
8

Building your own Python back didn't work for me. This works:

(note this is for a Centos 6x host, which now uses Python2.6, but it's the same thing)

wget  http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/x86_64/Packages/yum-3.2.29-40.el6.centos.noarch
wget  []://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/x86_64/Packages/python-devel-2.6.6-51.el6.x86_64.rpm
wget  []://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/x86_64/Packages/python-2.6.6-51.el6.x86_64.rpm
wget  []://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/os/x86_64/Packages/python-libs-2.6.6-51.el6.x86_64.rpm

rpm -Uvh --replacepkgs *.rpm

And then Yum will work again.

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  • I did have the same kind of incident when porting to Python3 in order to install a Python Webserver on Apache. I discovered that Yum was Python2 only. I have been looking for a wget solution to recover Yum. Thanks AndyD! I am on VM Centos7 though but I guess it shouldn't be an issue. A bit off topic but I am left with a option to install both Python versions in /usr/local directory and to point Python2 to system and Python3 for Apache.
    – user426034
    Jul 19, 2017 at 20:37
  • when i had this issue, wget/curl didnt work either but fortunately scp did
    – zzapper
    Aug 24, 2018 at 10:43
3

If you have make&&gcc installed:

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4/Python-2.4.tar.bz2
tar jfvx Python-2.4.tar.bz2
cd python
./configure
make all
make install

Then you can have your Python back.

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  • Thanks for that but as I lost the access to the server using SSH terminal, I couldn't try this. I ended up reinstalling the OS.
    – Umit
    Jul 26, 2012 at 8:41

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