After doing the whole thing, I'm now getting free() errors when loading anaconda shared libraries in Python. I'll try installing an edison anaconda.
$> mkdir -p /project/projectdirs/m1727/lsst_edison/lsstStack/
...
$> eups distrib install lsst_sims -t sims
This failed at installing healpy complaining about the version of setuptools. It turns out that the stock python path was making it into PYTHONPATH. This may be solved by unloading the python module before doing anything else, but it didn't help here.
Before
$> echo $PYTHONPATH
/project/projectdirs/m1727/lsst_edison/lsstStack/Linux64/sconsUtils/8.0.0.0/python:/scratch1/altd/lib64/python2.6/site-packages:/project/projectdirs/m1727/lsst_edison/lsstStack/eups/python
After
$> setenv PYTHONPATH /project/projectdirs/m1727/lsst_edison/lsstStack/Linux64/sconsUtils/8.0.0.0/python:/project/projectdirs/m1727/lsst_edison/lsstStack/eups/python