2.3 or 2.4 on linux

[Sells, Fred]

We are in the process of standardizing ~10 Linux servers on Lineox 4.x,
which is a variant of RedHat Enterprise server I'm told.  Part of that
process is to standardize python.

The baseline install includes python 2.3 which is adequate, but I would like
to standardize on 2.4.1, because it is the latest and greatest and has a few
modules that would be nice to have.   I installed python 2.4.1 ok, creating
a python24 directory alongside the pyhton23 directory.  The problems started
when I tried to install MySQLdb.

My problem is that all the rpm installs seem to impact the 2.3 that's there.
When I check the 2.3 site-packages directory, I find alot of goodies like 

Alchemist.py  kudzu.py                rpmdb
authconfigmodule.so    rpmmodule.so  CacheBlackBox.py      libusermodule.so
_snackmodule.so
  mod_python              snack.py  CompatMysqldb.py      mx
CompatMysqldb.pyc     MySQLdb   FileBlackBox.py       _mysql_exceptions.py
URLBlackBox.py
  ForgeBlackBox.py  _mysql.so     xf86config.py ForgeBlackBox.pyo
pyalchemist_python.py
   _xmlplus
ixf86configmodule.so 

I assume some system tools must use them, even if I don't.  I don't know if
I can just copy all this into the 2.4 site-packages (deleting .pyc and .pyo)
and get what I need.

I'm not a sysadmin hotshot, and our sysadmin is not a python hotshot, so
between us we can really screw up a system.  We would really like to stick
with either apt-get or rpm installs to keep our sysadmin issues under
control.  Has anyone hit this wall already and found a reasonable solution?.

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