Debian Lenny, Python 2.7 and mod_wsgi

Question

I am running a Debian Lenny box, which comes with Python 2.5.2. I would like to run Python 2.7 for my WSGI apps only, keeping 2.5 as default for the system, but I cannot get it to work.

First, I installed Python 2.7.2 from source into /usr/local:

Python-2.7.2 # ./configure --enable-shared
[…]
Python-2.7.2 # make
[…]
Python-2.7.2 # make altinstall
[…]

Calling python2.7 now from the command line works without any problems. It also finds packages installed via pip in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/packages.

Next, I built mod_wsgi and copied it manually to the Apache module directory, so as not to touch files placed by apt-get.

mod_wsgi-3.3 # ./configure --with-python=/usr/local/bin/python2.7
[…]
mod_wsgi-3.3 # make
[…]
mod_wsgi-3.3 # cp .libs/mod_wsgi.so /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_wsgi.so-2.7
mod_wsgi-3.3 # cd /usr/lib/apache2/modules
modules # ln -sf mod_wsgi.so-2.7 mod_wsgi.so
modules # ldd mod_wsgi.so-2.7
        linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff08f53000)
        libpython2.7.so.1.0 => /usr/local/lib/libpython2.7.so.1.0 (0x00002b0317e1f000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00002b03181fd000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00002b031841a000)
        libutil.so.1 => /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x00002b031861e000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00002b0318821000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00002b0318aa5000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00002b03179cd000)

I then modified /etc/apache2/mods-available/wsgi.conf and added the following directive:

<IfModule mod_wsgi.c>
    […]
    WSGIPythonHome /usr/local
    […]
</IfModule>

(Of course, wsgi.conf is symlinked in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled.)

Finally, I restarted apache, but my WSGI scripts won’t run. I get the following traceback in Apache’s error log:

mod_wsgi (pid=20746): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/path/to/script.wsgi'.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Flask-0.7.2-py2.5.egg/flask/app.py", line 1306, in __call__
    return self.wsgi_app(environ, start_response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Flask-0.7.2-py2.5.egg/flask/app.py", line 1295, in wsgi_app
    return response(environ, start_response)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Werkzeug-0.6.2-py2.5.egg/werkzeug/wrappers.py", line 1017, in __call__
    start_response(status, headers)
TypeError: expected byte string object for status, value of type str found

I also tried the test WSGI script found in the Installation Issues section of mod_wsgi’s documentation, but I get the same TypeError here. Judging from the traceback, I would guess that Apache now runs Python 2.5 in combination with mod_wsgi compiled for 2.7.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Problem solved. mod_python was also loaded, disabling it did the trick. As it is the vanilla mod_python shipped with Lenny’s Apache, it is compiled against Python 2.5.2—naturally, this cannot work in combination with mod_wsgi compiled against a different version.

Answer 2

tl;dr Make sure the PATH inherited by the Apache user account sees the Python2.7 /bin and not the older version.

http://modwsgi.googlecode.com/svn/branches/mod_wsgi-1.X/README

"If you have multiple versions of Python installed and you are not using that which is the default, you may have to organise that the PATH inherited by the Apache application when run will result in Apache finding the alternate version. Alternatively, the WSGIPythonExecutable directive should be used to specify the exact location of the 'python' executable corresponding to the version of Python compiled against. If this is not done, the version of Python running within Apache may attempt to use the Python modules from the wrong version of Python."

Other than that there is nothing that can be done aside from running another debian inside debian.

http://www.eggdrop.ch/texts/uml/

Having Nginx reverse proxy to the different virtual environments.