Basic steps that one would follow to have python ibm_db driver installed are:

1. Install and configure required python version

2. Install the python ibm_db driver.

When you try ibm_db installation as a non-root user, it might make use of the in-built(root installation) python and hence installation can fail with error " [Errno 30] Read-only file system".

To overcome the problem, you could either get write permissions for the site-packages directory or can have your own copy of python installed. If you are going to have your own copy of python installation, there are certain per-requisites viz zlib, openssl that you might run into while installing python/using ez_setup.py and chances are that your installation might fail with errors. To have a clean installation, you could try the following:

1.  Install zlib

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You can configure your own zlib as follows:

 i) download zlib and extract source tar file
   $curl -O http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz
   $tar -xzvf zlib-1.2.8.tar.gz

ii) config and install
    $./configure --prefix=/Users/regress1/python/zlib128
    $make
    $make install

2. install openssl:
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 i) download oppenssl and extract source tar file
     $curl -O http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz (you can download the version as per your requirement)
     $tar -xzvf openssl-1.0.2d.tar.gz

ii) config and install
    $cd to open openssl folder
    $./Configure darwin64-x86_64-cc --prefix=/Users/regress1/python/openssl
    $make
    $make install

3. Install Python:

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 i) download and extract python

ii) config and install
     $CFLAGS="-I/Users/regress1/python/zlib128/include -I/Users/regress1/python/openssl/include" LDFLAGS="-L/Users/regress1/python/zlib128/lib -L/Users/regress1/python/openssl/lib" ./configure --prefix=/Users/regress1/python/python2710
     $make
     $make install

4. install setuptools
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  i) set local python in PATH env variable
     $export PATH=/Users/regress1/python/python2710/bin:$PATH

 ii) install setuptools using ez_setup script
      $curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -o - | python

5. Install valid certificate

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If you hit certificate errors while trying to install the packages from pypi, you would need to  make sure you have a valid certificate available under your setuptools directory.

Error one might see would be: ssl.SSLError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:645)

You can install a valid certificate using the following steps:

 i) curl http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem -o /Users/regress1/python/openssl/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt

ii) Unzipp the setuptools under  /Users/regress1/python/Python-2.7.10
       cd setuptools-18.4/setuptools
       edit ssl_support.py and add following line in bold:
      cert_paths = """
     /Users/regress1/python/openssl/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
     /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
     /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
     /usr/share/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt
     /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root.crt
     /etc/ssl/cert.pem
     /System/Library/OpenSSL/certs/cert.pem
     """.strip().split()
     cd ../

iii) python setup.py install (install setup tools to make the changes effective)

6. Install ibm_db :

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i)  easy_install ibm_db or pip install ibm_db or pip3 install ibm_db

ii) If you are on MAC OS, you would need to set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to the lib path where ODBC and CLI Driver  is extracted.
       e.g : export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Users/regress1/python/python2710/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ibm_db-2.0.6-py2.7-macosx-10.4-x86_64.egg/clidriver/lib

7. If you are establishing an SSL connection as a non-root user and installed the ibm_db driver as root, you would need to give necessary permissions to <path to clidriver>/cfg folder, failing which
you might hit error for the connection.

    e.g :
    #!/usr/bin/env python
    import ibm_db
    conn = ibm_db.connect(
     'UID=uuuuuu;PWD=xxxxxx;DATABASE=BLUDB;HOSTNAME=dashdbxxxxxx.services.dal.bluemix.net;PORT=50001;PROTOCOL=TCPIP;SECURITY=ssl', '', '')
 
Exception: [IBM][CLI Driver] SQL10013N  The specified library "GSKit Error: 8" could not be loaded.  SQLSTATE=42724 SQLCODE=-10013
 
To resolve above error, you could perform the following action:
 
 cd <clidriver path installed as root>
 chmod   o+w cfg