Dreamhost default python 2.4 :(

All Python CGI scripts on dreamhost MUST...

• end in ".py" (NOTE: ".cgi" works as well)
• have #!/usr/bin/python in the very first line of the file (NOTE: #!/usr/bin/python2.x or #!/usr/bin/env python2.x will work as well)
• be marked as executable: chmod 755
• use UNIX style newlines, not Windows 
• If you want to view printed output from your Python code, you must print print "Content-type: text/html\n\n" as the first line of output.
• If you don't want .py files to be executed by Apache add "RemoveHandler .py" command to your .htaccess file

Installation a custom version of Python

wget http://python.org/ftp/python/VERSION/Python-2.5.2.tgz

tar -xzvf Python-VERSION.tgz

cd Python-VERSION

./configure --prefix=$HOME

make

make install

setuptools

cd ${HOME}/soft
wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
${RUN}/bin/python ez_setup.py

A newer SWIG

cd ${HOME}/soft
# download and extract the package
wget http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/swig/swig-1.3.34.tar.gz
tar xvzf swig-1.3.34.tar.gz
cd swig-1.3.34
# configure, compile and verify
./configure --prefix=${RUN}
make
make check
# you might get some errors about ocaml.
# these don't matter (unless you intend to
# use this version of SWIG to generate
# ocaml bindings too).
make install