Sealyu

With Django 0.95 being introduced being introduced a few days ago, I figured a quick post on what we experienced installing Django might help someone out. None of this covers new ground, but perhaps another telling of the story will provide someone an extra hook to grab onto.

This tutorial is going to cover installing Django with the following:

• Apache 2
• MySQL
• mod_python
• Python (2.4)

For the record, I'm running all of this off of OpenSuSE 10.1 - so obligatory YMMV. Please comment with suggestions or problems if so, though.

First off, make sure you've got Apache up and running. ps aux | grep httpd can tell ya for the most part. If you don't know how to do this much, though, I'm afraid you're reading the wrong tutorial.

Step 1: Install mod_python

This will vary pretty widely amongst distributions, but our goal was to have a package manager do it. One of the below will probably work for you:

• SuSE: In YaST, search for mod_python in Software Management
• Ubuntu/Debian/apt-based: apt-get install libapache2-mod-python2.4
• Redhat/FC4: yum install mod_python

Step 2: Install Django

So with mod_python installed, now we can get to Django. We have been tracking along with Subversion up until now, but since we're getting ready to put a large (for us) site into production, we are planning on sticking with numbered releases, but it remains to be seen if we'll change our minds on that one in order to take advantage of the enhancements that continue to stream in. If you want to live closer to the edge, you can get the development trunk through subversion.

Note that the last command will automatically download and install 'setuptools' if you don't already have it installed.

Step 3: Create a Project

So assuming everything went well, (It did, didn't it?), we're ready to start our first django project. Start your first project by going into the directory you want to hold your django projects (preferably outside of your web document root), and typing:

As the djangoproject.com tutorial says…

django-admin.py should be on your system path if you installed Django via python setup.py. If it's not on your path, you can find it in site-packages/django/bin, where site-packages is a directory within your Python installation. Consider symlinking to django-admin.py from some place on your path, such as /usr/local/bin.

This will start you off with the basic settings and files needed for your django project. But we're not done quite yet! We have to tell apache what to do to handle mod_python requests.

Step 4: Configure Apache

To get apache to handle python requests, we first need to activate mod_python. Again, this is one of those things that will vary pretty widely through distributions, but essentially you'll need this command in Apache's httpd.conf file:

(note: Purportedly on debian this is done for you automatically - so you will likely be able to skip this step)
In OpenSuSE the best way to do this is to go into YaST-> Sysconfig Editor-> Network-> WWW-> Apache2, and append 'python' onto the APACHE_MODULES setting. There may be other ways to do this more painlessly than file editing in other distro's, as well. Let me know if there are and I will update this section.

Now that apache knows about python, we have to tell it where to -use- python. So go into your httpd.conf file (if you're using virtual hosts, pick the appropriate virtual host config file) and add this location directive:

Now save, restart apache, and browse to your server + /myProject (i.e., http://www.yourhost.com/myProject).

Did it come up with a special looking 404 error? If so, you've got Django installed, man! Better go follow the more informative and better written Django Tutorial to see how to really get rolling with it - you're ready to start developing!