Το φιτρί αγόρι (colourful life)

I’ve chosen Hostmonster as a shared hosting provider for one my projects using Django. I’ve been using hostmonster for this blog so I wanted to give it a try for more professional matters. The problem is that hostmonster is not django/python friendly. I’ve found the following problems:

• No subversion (svn) client.
• Old python without mysql support.
• Of course, no Django support.

As you can see:

$ python -V
Python 2.3.4
$ svn
-bash: svn: command not found

But not supported doesn’t mean impossible. You can have your python 2.5 and Django from subversion (And everything you want to install). You only need to install the software we need from scratch. If you want to know how, just read the rest of this entry.

1. Getting started.

Let’s make a summary of the steps we have to accomplish. But before starting you’ll need ssh access to hostmonster. So go to your control panel, request the service and add your public key (or generate a new pair).

Then you will download (hostmonster provides wget) and configure the following software:

• Python: the version provided is old.
• Svn:to use the svn version of djang, and perhaps to use the svn version of your application.
• Django from the svn repository and related python modules.
• All the python modules you need. Like MySQLdb, setuptools and others.

Every piece of software will be installed in your home folder. You’re not root on the shared server so you have to keep your things in your home directory. You will create different folders for this purpose.

2. Python

So let’s start with the easy one. You need to retrieve the python source code to be able to compile it in hostmonster and have our precious 2.5.x python there (2.5.2 at the time of writing this post) . From your home directory (the one you get when you enter through ssh) type:

$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.2/Python-2.5.2.tar.bz2
$ tar xjf Python-2.5.2.tar.bz2

Now you need to create a directory to install python in it. (reminder: we’re not root, we cannot install it in the system directories!).

$ mkdir python

And then the final step: compile and install. You have to configure the python source to be installed in the directory we’ve created before. Also during the configure and make install steps you’ll see a lot of information. Just pay attention when configure and make install finish. If something went wrong it will be reported at the end (I mean, when the command stops).

From your home folder execute the following:

$ cd Python-2.5.2
$ ./configure –prefix=$HOME/python
$ make
$ make install

Everything seems perfect but, do you want to check if your new python works? No problem:

$ cd
$ python/bin/python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, May 20 2008, 09:22:13)
[GCC 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-9)] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>>

The last step is to configure your shell to use our python installation by default. This can be done updating the path in the .bashrc file. This file is located in your home folder (the one you’re when you enter in your account, or when you type just cd). Edit this file with vim and add the following line in the end:

PATH=~/python/bin:$PATH

Notes:

• Do not use $HOME here, use ~ instead.
• You need to reload the contents of .bashrc. You can just disconnect and connect again. Or type:

  source .bashrc

  After that, type python to see if your changes have been applied and you’re executing the 2.5 version.

You’re ready for the next step. But before that, you have to clean a bit the mess. This mean to remove the python source code. We won’t use it again.

$ rm Python-2.5.2.tar.bz2
$ rm -rf Python-2.5.2/

3. SVN

Now it’s time for Subversion. You install subversion in second place because it will build a python extension and it’s better to do it with your new installation than with the old one. The first step, as before, is to download, unpack and create a destination directory:

$ wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.4.6.tar.bz2
$ wget http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-deps-1.4.6.tar.bz2
$ tar xjf subversion-1.4.6.tar.bz2
$ tar xjf subversion-deps-1.4.6.tar.bz2
$ mkdir svn

Then configure the source code and install in the directory we’ve created. I’ll explain the options here:

• –prefix: tells “make install” to install subversion in the directory we type there.
• –with-expat=builtin: There is a problem linking with the expat library provided by hostmonster. The library apr-utils (included in subversion deps) have problems with the original library, so we use the one included in apr-utils.
• –with-ssl: For https support.
• –with-pic: compiles all the code with support for “Position Independent Code”. If not, you’ll have problems linking with some libraries in hostmonster.

Let’s proceed with:

$ cd subversion-1.4.6
$ ./configure –prefix=$HOME/svn –with-expat=builtin –with-pic –with-ssl
$ make
$ make install

Is Subversion working?

$ cd
$ svn/bin/svn –version
svn, version 1.4.6 (r28521)
compiled May 20 2008, 09:47:21
…

Also as before, you need to access the subversion client you just compiled. For that you’ll update the .bashrc file. The new PATH line will be (sorry for making you update the file twice):

PATH=~/python/bin:~/svn/bin:$PATH

Do not forget to reload your .bashrc:

source .bashrc

And in the end, clean a bit the mess.

$ rm subversion-1.4.6.tar.bz2
$ rm subversion-deps-1.4.6.tar.bz2
$ rm -rf subversion-1.4.6/

4. Extra python modules.

Before continuing with Django, you need some extra python modules for it like mysqldb and flup (for fastcgi). There is a really good tool called easy_install from setuptools. With this tool we can install easily almost any package. You’ll use it here to install the ones needed by Django.

First download the installation package with:

$ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py

And then install with:

$ python ez_setup.py

After that you can remove ez_setup.py:

$ rm ez_setup.py

Now let’s install the modules we need: flup and mysqldb. The script easy_install is in the same folder as your python binaries. If you have added the path to the .bashrc and loaded the file or re-entered again in your shell. Just type:

$ easy_install MySQL-python
$ easy_install flup

To test the installation, just import the libraries in a python shell:

$ python
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, May 23 2008, 08:23:55)
[GCC 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-9)] on linux2
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> import MySQLdb, flup

5. Django from subversion.

Here you can follow the steps from the django documentation about installing from subversion. But in few lines, these are the steps.

First checkout Django from the subversion in your home folder:

$ svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ django-trunk

Then tell python to use the django module we’ve just downloaded:

$ cd python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/
$ ln -s ../../../../django-trunk/django

And the last step is to modify (again) our .bashrc to add the django utilities to our path. The ultra updated PATH line will look like this:

PATH=~/python/bin:~/svn/bin:~/django-trunk/django/bin:$PATH

Do not forget to check if everything is working:

$ cd
$ python -c “import django;print django.VERSION”
(0, 97, ‘pre’)

6. Running as Fast CGI.

You have everything ready in your account to run django applications. You can just follow the tutorial from Django about running Django in FastCGI mode.

There is only one thing you need to care about. In host monster instead of mod_fastcgi there is fcgid. It provides the same functionality, but it changes the AddHandler line in your .htaccess to:

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi

So your .htaccess file can look like this:

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ mysite.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]

For the mysite.fcgi you have to have in mind two things:

1. Do not put /usr/bin/python , use /yourhome/yourusername/python/bin/python (Change yourhome and yourusername for the values you obatin from executing “echo $HOME”).
2. You have to insert the path of the root folder of your application. Example: if your application is in /home2/john/mydjangoproject/. Use

   sys.path.insert(0, “/home2/john/”)
   os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = “mydjangoproject.settings”

As an example, your mysite.fcgi can look like this:

#!/home/pictumania/python/bin/python
import sys, os

sys.path.insert(0, “/home/pictumania”)

# Set the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable.
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = “pictuapp.settings”

from django.core.servers.fastcgi import runfastcgi
runfastcgi(method=”threaded”, daemonize=”false”)

7. In the end…

That’s all. I hope It helped you if you tried to do something similar or exactly this. If you have any questions, just put them as a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them, but I’m not a Django expert.

Also I hope you didn’t cry much reading my poor english grammar.