On Aug 24, 2006, at 12:36 AM, uuellbee wrote:

I agree, I switched the PylonsHQ site over yesterday, and there were some quirks getting it to run at the site root.

Here's what my eventual setup looked like. This setup assumes you have Apache 2.0+ and mod_python.

First, the mod_python.wsgi script the Wiki points to needs a minor change. This is because it doesn't properly handle the case when SCRIPT_NAME isn't set in your mod_python config. The following lines need to be added to the file around line 110 so that the section dealing with SCRIPT_NAME looks like this:

111 if 'SCRIPT_NAME' not in options: 112 options['SCRIPT_NAME'] = '' 113 114 if 'SCRIPT_NAME' in options: 115 # Override SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO if requested. 116 env['SCRIPT_NAME'] = options['SCRIPT_NAME'] 117 env['PATH_INFO'] = req.uri[len(options['SCRIPT_NAME']):] 118 119 env['wsgi.input'] = InputWrapper(req)

This way the script will properly deal with being at the root. I decided to avoid the .htaccess thing, so this is what the full VirtualHost looks like for PylonsHQ. Keep in mind I'm also serving non-Pylons content, which you might want to do as well (svn, trac, etc):

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin EMAIL_ADDRESS ServerName pylonshq.com DocumentRoot /home/pylonshq/pylonshq # ROOT OF THE PYLONSHQ PROJECT CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/pylonshq.com/access_log" clf ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/pylonshq.com/error_log"

Alias /WebHelpers "/usr/local/www/pylonshq/WebHelpers" Alias /trac "/usr/local/share/trac/htdocs" Alias /files "/usr/local/www/pylonshq/files" Alias /project/pylonshq /usr/local/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.fcgi/pylonshq Alias /project /usr/local/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.fcgi/pylonshq

# REMOVE THIS IF YOU ARENT USING mod_cache + mod_disk_cache CacheRoot /tmp/apachecache CacheSize 51200 CacheEnable disk /style CacheEnable disk /img CacheEnable disk /scripts CacheEnable disk /trac/js CacheEnable disk /trac/css

<Location /> SetHandler mod_python PythonHandler mod_python.wsgi PythonPath "['/home/pylonshq/pylonshq','/home/pylonshq/lib/python2.4/'] + sys.path" PythonAutoReload Off PythonOption wsgi.application startup::app

# Insert filter, REMOVE THIS IF YOU ARENT USING mod_deflate SetOutputFilter DEFLATE BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \ \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary </Location>

<LocationMatch /(trac|WebHelpers|RailsHelpers|files).*> # HERE, WE TURN OFF PYLONS FOR THE OTHER LOCATIONS SetHandler None </LocationMatch>

<LocationMatch /project> # TRAC IS RUNNING THROUGH FASTCGI SetHandler fastcgi-script Options +ExecCGI </LocationMatch>

<Location "/project/pylonshq/login"> # TRAC's LOGIN FILE AuthType Digest AuthName "PylonsHQ" AuthDigestFile /somewhere.htpasswd Require valid-user </Location>

<Location /svn> DAV svn SVNPath /home/svn/pylons AuthType Digest AuthName Pylons AuthDigestFile /somewhere_else.htpasswd <LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT> Require valid-user </LimitExcept> </Location> </VirtualHost>

And the startup.py script that is inside /home/pylonshq/pylonshq:

from paste.deploy import loadapp import os import site site.addsitedir('/home/pylonshq/lib/python2.4/site-packages/')

heredir = os.path.dirname(__file__) app = loadapp("config:%s" % os.path.join(heredir, 'pylonshq.ini'))

So, things to note.

I'm not having Apache serve the projects public files (static media) directly. This is because having Pylons serve static content is rather powerful, and it can load static content from multiple paths at once, capabilities HTTP servers like Apache and Lighttpd do not have. To compensate for performance, I have mod_cache/mod_disk_cache caching the content under the URL's (/img, /styles, etc) so that it significantly lowers the load on the Python app and I get rather nice speed out of it. (Note, the release version of Paste does not set Last-Modified headers, upgrade to Paste==dev if you're using mod_cache so that the Last-Modified headers are set)

I have the SetHandler for the root in a Location block. This is to ensure that when Apache checks priorities on how to serve content under various URL's, I can disable Pylons for the URL root's that I want Trac to handle. You can add additional Location blocks for other URL spaces that you'd like handled differently as well, and it makes it pretty clean in my opinion.

The /home/pylonshq is a user by the name of 'pylonshq'. Sorry if that caused some confusion. This user has a virtual Python setup, thus the 'import site, and site.addsitedir' lines in the startup.py. If you're not using a virtual Python setup, those lines are not needed.

I'm using a virtual user to run the site so that I can test out updates and such without worrying about whats system installed. If you have multiple virtual hosted sites running with multiple virtual Python package installs, you *should* use the PythonInterpreter option to have each virtual host use a different Python interpreter. That way you can avoid having Python path conflicts loading un-intended versions of a module. (Note that this is also suggested for multiple Django sites as Django though for a different reason).

I will be turning this into a doc, and likely the *recommended* deployment method for Pylons (and probably Paste apps in general). I also plan on updating the WSGI script so that the startup.py file is not needed. Maybe a wsgi_paste script that lets you set the ini file in the Apache config.

Any thoughts, questions?

Cheers, Ben