Problem installing 3.2.1 on a Linux server

[Ned Deily]

In article 
<CABmUWRnB=OUDPPGsKjJ-rnWVjOQz3iN4-wkFmxfRaYLZcv+8NQ at mail.gmail.com>,
 John S James <john2james at gmail.com> wrote:
> My ISP (Bluehost) does not yet support Python version 3, but gave me shell
> access (no sudo) so that I can install Python 3 myself on my server account
> (running Apache). So I uploaded the standard Python.org installation package
> (Python 3.2.1 for Linux) and followed instructions, starting with
> ./configure. These instructions had worked for me before, to install Python3
> on a Linux netbook.
> 
> But on the server, ./configure starts fine, but later stops with an error.
> Here is the section of the output where the error occurred:
> *checking for build directories... done*
> *configure: creating ./config.status*
> *config.status: creating Makefile.pre*
> *config.status: creating Modules/Setup.config*
> *config.status: error: cannot find input file: `Misc/python.pc.in'*
> 
> Then the ./configure step stopped. Needless to say, the next step, Make, did
> not work because there was no Makefile.

Works for me on a current Debian system.  Are you downloading the source 
from python.org?  Did you verify that the file is created by tar? 

$ curl -O http://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.2.1/Python-3.2.1.tgz
$ tar xzf Python-3.2.1.tgz
$ cd ./Python-3.2.1/
$ ls -l Misc/python.pc.in
-rw-r----- 1 nad nad 293 Jul  8 23:58 Misc/python.pc.in
$ ./configure
[...]
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile.pre
config.status: creating Modules/Setup.config
config.status: creating Misc/python.pc
config.status: creating Modules/ld_so_aix
config.status: creating pyconfig.h
creating Modules/Setup
creating Modules/Setup.local
creating Makefile

If you are still having problems, chances are you have an out-of-date or 
incomplete version of GNU autotools which contains the macros and tools 
that are used by the ./configure script.  On my system:

$ autoconf --version
autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.68

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org