Frustrated trying to build beecrypt & rpm on a Debian system where I'm not root

I have a user account on Dreamhost.com. I've been making RPMs for
Scientific Linux and posting them here

http://pj.freefaculty.org/ScientificLinux/5

A guy says "create a repository there" and I've been fighting with the
problem of building, installing, and using Python modules in a place
that is NOT /usr/lib/python2.4.

I'm using the configure option --prefix=/home/pauljohn32/packages when
I build everything.   TO make RPM's configure  find the Beecrypt I
have to force in a CFLAG -I/home/pauljohn32/packages/include

and I set the environment variable

PYTHONPATH=/home/pauljohn32/packages/lib/python2.4:/usr/lib/python2.4

One problem is that the Beecrypt source from the Fedora 8 distribution
is hardcoded to put the python modules in that system place, and it
ignores the install prefix.  I can hand edit the Makefile so they go
into /home/pauljohn32/packages/lib/python2.4.   I've built rpm several
times and installed it, thinking I had tricked it into installing
modules into my user home directory, only to have runtime failures in
the createrepo scripts.  Those are hardcoded to go into /usr/, but i
can revise that.  Still, I get crashes because python components are
not found.


$ createrepo /home/pauljohn32/freefaculty.org/ScientificLinux/5/i386/
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pauljohn32/packages/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py",
line 23, in ?
    import os
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/os.py", line 133
    from os.path import (curdir, pardir, sep, pathsep, defpath, extsep, altsep,
                        ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax


I'm a Perl programmer, and I am sorry to say I find Python docs not as
helpful for non-root users!  Please throw me a bone (for the holiday
spirit).

PJ
-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas