The reason for this tutorial is quite easy: To make this happen, I had to read about 100 pages, all with different solutions, all of them not or only partially working.
After aprox. 8 hours of trial and error, I finally had the best of all the posts compiled to a working set of instructions – so here is the HowTo:
Login as user root to the server in question.
First of all: The usage with the pre-installed mod_python is no fun at all and leads to many errors, therefore it is better to switch to mod_wsgi. If you need the mod_python, stop NOW and search for a different solution. Honestly: I tried it also with mod_python and wasted 6 of the above 8 hours, banging with my head into wall after wall.
Update: And now, that everything was compiled and done, they tell me to use Python 2.6 instead of 2.4 – so please find below the latest install guide for Python 2.6!
1. Add the EPEL repository for the correct CentOS version your server runs on:
CentOS 5: http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm CentOS 4: http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/4/i386/epel-release-4-10.noarch.rpm
2. disable this repository (no joke), otherwise it tries always to update stuff and will break Plesk!
Edit the file /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo and set everywhere “enabled=0″
3. install the following packages:
yum install gcc httpd-devel rpm-build yum install git python26 python26-devel python26-distribute python26-libs python26-simplejson --enablerepo=epel
4. Now we create the pip (Python package installer) tool
cd /usr/src curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py python26 distribute_setup.py curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py python26 get-pip.py yumdownloader --source mod_wsgi --enablerepo=epel rpm -ivh mod_wsgi*rpm
5. Enable Python 2.6 support for mod_wsgi
cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
Edit the file mod_wsgi.spec
change:
%configure --enable-shared
to:
%configure --enable-shared --with-python=/usr/bin/python2.6
6. Compile mod_wsgi and install
rpmbuild -ba mod_wsgi.spec rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/mod_wsgi-3.2-2.i386.rpm
7. Disable mod_python in Apache
Edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/python.conf
change:
LoadModule python_module modules/mod_python.so
# Override type-map handler for /var/www/manual
<Directory "/var/www/manual/mod/mod_python">
<Files *.html>
SetHandler default-handler
</Files>
</Directory>
to:
#LoadModule python_module modules/mod_python.so # Override type-map handler for /var/www/manual #<Directory "/var/www/manual/mod/mod_python"> # <Files *.html> # SetHandler default-handler # </Files> #</Directory>
8. Enable mod_wsgi
Edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/wsgi.conf
Change:
#LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so
to:
LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so
Now we’re ready to rumble.
The following describes the setup of the Django Fiber example project (ridethepony) to the domain “domain.nl”:
1. lets go to the subdirectory in question:
cd /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl
2. setup a vhost.conf file to redirect dynamic requests to mod_wsgi and static page requests to the common httpdocs directory
Edit conf/vhost.conf, adding the following lines:
Alias /robots.txt /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/httpdocs/robots.txt
Alias /favicon.ico /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/httpdocs/favicon.ico
Alias /static/ /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/httpdocs/
Alias /media/ /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/httpdocs/media/
WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/django.wsgi
<Directory /var/www/vhosts/domain.nl>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
3. download the application, unpack and rename
git clone git://github.com/ridethepony/django-fiber-example.git mv django-fiber-example pony
4. prepare the application
chmod 0777 pony cd pony pip install -r requirements.txt cp settings.example.py settings.py
5. Edit settings.py
Change:
'NAME': 'fiber_example', # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
to:
'NAME': '/var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/pony/fiber_example', # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
6. Edit settings_default.py
Change:
TEMPLATE_DIRS = ( # Put strings here, like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates". # Always use forward slashes, even on Windows. # Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths. )
to:
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
# Put strings here, like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates".
# Always use forward slashes, even on Windows.
# Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths.
'/var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/pony/pages/templates',
)
7. Create the default database and import the content
python26 manage.py syncdb python26 manage.py loaddata ./fixtures/example_initial_data.json chmod 0666 fiber_example
8. copy the static css files into the static directories
python26 manage.py collectstatic --link cp -a pages/static/* ../httpdocs/.
9. create the base WSGI file
cd ..
create file django.wsgi with the following content:
import os import sys path = '/var/www/vhosts/domain.nl/pony' if path not in sys.path: sys.path.append(path) os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings' import django.core.handlers.wsgi application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()
10. activate the Apache and vhost changes:
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng --reconfigure-all service httpd restart
11. Enjoy the result at http://domain.nl