We recommend to use the Python 3 that is available via Red Hat Software Collections. Software collections are part of your RHEL subscription and have their own release cadence so they can be updated more frequently and independent of RHEL OS releases. These are very secure and fully supported by Red Hat. Software collections is now up to Python 3.8. What's great about software collections is that Python 3.8 installations will be exactly the same across your servers - whether you install some today or in 3 months. A problem with other alternatives (e.g. EPEL) is that the package set may be one thing today but be different in 3 months. Also, software collections allow you to install 2 different Pythons in parallel without contention. A lot of RHEL 7 was built on Python 2.7 and installing Python 3 without software collections can potentially (and commonly) break the OS.

To install python 3 on RHEL 7, use these instructions. Installation requires that you need to enable the correct repos, etc. The first time through may be a bit slow, but people have found it to be routine afterwards.

These same software collections are also delivered as Linux containers and can be found in our catalog.

RHEL 7 and its derivatives depend on Python 2 at a very deep level. If you outright replace Python 2 with 3, you'll break several of the OS's core tools.

Even if that were not the case, your question is based on an incorrect premise, being that completely replacing Python 2 with Python 3 is a good idea in the first place. Instead, install both side-by-side.

How? It starts with the fact that one should always call Python 3 as python3, since that insulates you from the major version compatibility problem. Scripts that assume Python 2 will call it as python in shebang lines and such, so there is not in fact a conflict between the old version and your newer version's python3 binary and everything that depends on it, as long as your binary Python packages are built properly.

That “if” can bite you: some packagers have created Python 3 packages with a /usr/bin/python or similar, which creates a conflict. These packages are ignoring the standard advice, which allows both to be installed in parallel.

As for getting a non-conflicting Python 3 package for RHEL 7, that’s well covered in another answer on Stack Overflow.

You have to find the specific module binary available by yum and copy it to the offline server, so you are basically downloading a binary module on your machine followed by copying the directory into the designated place from your VPN.

one solution can be to use yumdownloader --resolve <package name>

The order of installing them is determined by yum:

yum install ./*rpm Now you have to run above command in the folder with your downloaded packages that include all dependencies and it will do the needful.

Python 3.7 is not available as an rpm for RHEL 8. There's 3.6 and 3.8/3.9 available. If you want, you can compile it to have it on your system:

dnf install gcc openssl-devel bzip2-devel libffi-devel

cd /opt && wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.9/Python-3.7.9.tgz

tar xvzf Python-3.7.9.tgz

cd Python-3.7.9

./configure --enable-optimizations

make altinstall

After that, you can refer to the binary as python3.7

Installing from RPM is generally better, because:

• you can install and uninstall (properly) python3.
• the installation time is way faster. If you work in a cloud environment with multiple VMs, compiling python3 on each VMs is not acceptable.

Solution 1: Red Hat & EPEL repositories

Red Hat has added through the EPEL repository:

• Python 3.4 for CentOS 6
• Python 3.6 for CentOS 7

[EPEL] How to install Python 3.4 on CentOS 6

sudo yum install -y epel-release
sudo yum install -y python34

# Install pip3
sudo yum install -y python34-setuptools  # install easy_install-3.4
sudo easy_install-3.4 pip

You can create your virtualenv using pyvenv:

pyvenv /tmp/foo

[EPEL] How to install Python 3.6 on CentOS 7

With CentOS7, pip3.6 is provided as a package :)

sudo yum install -y epel-release
sudo yum install -y python36 python36-pip

You can create your virtualenv using pyvenv:

python3.6 -m venv /tmp/foo

If you use the pyvenv script, you'll get a WARNING:

$ pyvenv-3.6 /tmp/foo
WARNING: the pyenv script is deprecated in favour of `python3.6 -m venv`

Solution 2: IUS Community repositories

The IUS Community provides some up-to-date packages for RHEL & CentOS. The guys behind are from Rackspace, so I think that they are quite trustworthy...

https://ius.io/

Check the right repo for you here:

https://ius.io/setup

[IUS] How to install Python 3.6 on CentOS 6

sudo yum install -y https://repo.ius.io/ius-release-el6.rpm
sudo yum install -y python36u python36u-pip

You can create your virtualenv using pyvenv:

python3.6 -m venv /tmp/foo

[IUS] How to install Python 3.6 on CentOS 7

sudo yum install -y https://repo.ius.io/ius-release-el7.rpm
sudo yum install -y python36u python36u-pip

You can create your virtualenv using pyvenv:

python3.6 -m venv /tmp/foo