Django and WSGI and Apache2-- site is perfect in test server, won't load with Apache

Question

OK I don't what I'm doing wrong here. I have a Linode VPS running Ubuntu. I installed Django 1.3, Apache2, and mod-WSGI. I created my (extermely simple) website, slapped in some images, have a CSS sheet, have a favicon.ico and it works beautifully with the Django test server. The site looks precisely as it should -- all the images load, the CSS is working properly, etc.

Then I tried running the site with Apache and it won't work. Here are my relevant configuration files:

Apache sites-enabled/default:

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin ***@***.com WSGIScriptAlias / /srv/www/django_site/django.wsgi AliasMatch ^/([^/]*\.css) /srv/www/django_site/static_media/css/$1 Alias /static_media/ /srv/www/django_site/static_media/ <Directory /srv/www/django_site> Options -Indexes Order deny,allow Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /srv/www/logs/error.log LogLevel warn CustomLog /srv/www/logs/access.log combined Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/" <Directory "/usr/share/doc/"> Options MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 </Directory> 

My WSGI script (django.wsgi):

import os import sys path = '/srv/www' if path not in sys.path: sys.path.append(path) os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'django_site.settings' import django.core.handlers.wsgi application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler() 

When I try to surf to the website, I get a 500 internal error page. The traceback is this:

 Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs) File "/srv/www/django_site/quote/views.py", line 9, in about return render_to_response("pages/about.html", context_instance=RequestContext(request)) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/shortcuts/__init__.py", line 20, in render_to_response return HttpResponse(loader.render_to_string(*args, **kwargs), **httpresponse_kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 181, in render_to_string t = get_template(template_name) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 157, in get_template template, origin = find_template(template_name) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 128, in find_template loader = find_template_loader(loader_name) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/template/loader.py", line 95, in find_template_loader mod = import_module(module) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/utils/importlib.py", line 35, in import_module __import__(name) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/template/loaders/app_directories.py", line 23, in <module> raise ImproperlyConfigured('ImportError %s: %s' % (app, e.args[0])) ImproperlyConfigured: ImportError quote: No module named quote 

In the traceback, I don't know why it is claiming that there is No module named quote since that module does indeed exist, and it works fine in the Django test server.

This should be straight forward. What boggles my mind is that I have a second Linode VPS running Ubuntu with a different website that has the exact configuration files and it works perfectly.

I bet this is some simple tweak and it will all work.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Change path in your django.wsgi to /srv/www/django_site.

It's expecting to be able to import your modules into library code elsewhere, which it can't do without having them in the path.

Answer 2

OK -- I figured it out. After much hair pulling and frustration, it came down to a setting in my settings.py file. My original settings.py file had the installed app section with my little app quote. It looked like this:

INSTALLED_APPS = ( 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.sites', 'django.contrib.messages', 'django.contrib.staticfiles', 'south', 'quote', ) 

The app South is the MySQL schema migration utility and then we have my single app called quote. It was this line that was causing all the errors.

The solution: add my project name in front of my app's name. Like so:

INSTALLED_APPS = ( 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.sites', 'django.contrib.messages', 'django.contrib.staticfiles', 'south', 'django_site.quote', ) 

Yes. That is it! Now the site works through Apache as it should. I don't understand why this wasn't causing similar errors on the Django test server. Oh well.

This screw up on my part is certainly humbling!