As of recently, python26-distribute has been removed from EPEL5 due to lack of support and attempting to install salt-minion on RHEL5 will throw a dependency error. If you are still running RHEL5, you would need to obtain python26-distribute-0.6.10-5.3.noarch.rpm and install it separately, after installing python26. Here’s an example:

if [ `rpm -qa | grep -c "epel-release"` -eq 0 ]
then
 rpm -Uvh http://amidala.krazyworks.local/scripts/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
 yum clean all ; yum -y --disablerepo="epel" update nss
fi

yum -y install python26

cd /tmp
wget http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/home:/matejv:/epel/RedHat_RHEL-5/noarch/python26-distribute-0.6.10-5.3.noarch.rpm

rpm -Uvh python26-distribute-0.6.10-5.3.noarch.rpm