How can I activate a virtual environment (venv) on Linux without getting permission errors?

I’m trying to activate venv on a Red Hat Linux machine running Python 2.5.2. I created a virtual environment using Virtualenv 1.6.4 (since it’s compatible with Python 2.6), and everything seems to install correctly, Python, setuptools, and pip are all in place.

However, when I try to activate the environment using . bin/activate, I get a “Permission denied” error. I’ve checked and even changed file permissions, but the issue persists. Has anyone encountered this before? What’s the proper way to activate a virtual environment in Linux under these conditions?