mod_wsgi on OpenBSD - take 2

Before we get going, I would like to point out that this information is provided to you at your own risk. You should know how to modify configuration files and rebuild programs before you attempt to perform the steps above. I am not responsible for any damage, loss of data, or loss of use if you attempt to use any of this information on your own systems.

Sorry, I have to cover my a$$. :)

Let's get this thing rolling, shall we?

As I stated in my previous post, the only ways to get mod_wsgi working with the version of apache that comes stock with OpenBSD are:

1. Recompile apache with the pthread lib -or-
2. Use the LD_PRELOAD trick to preload the pthread library before running httpd

If you are squeemish on recompiling, go ahead and use the LD_PRELOAD trick. Please keep in mind though that you need the exact path and version number of pthread for it to work. This means that you also need to keep track of the version number of pthread whenever a new version of OpenBSD is released. Example:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libpthread.so.11.0 apachectl start

To be honest, recompiling apache is a bit easier and less of a hand cramp. Per James Turner's post, you just need to add one line to the configure file: /usr/src/usr.sbin/httpd/src/Configure. At line 519 of the configure file, just add LIBS="$LIBS -pthread". So the section will go from this:

*-openbsd*)
OS='OpenBSD'
DBM_LIB=""
DB_LIB=""
DEF_WANTHSREGEX=no
;;

to this:

*-openbsd*)
OS='OpenBSD'
DBM_LIB=""
DB_LIB=""
DEF_WANTHSREGEX=no
LIBS="$LIBS -pthread" # Add pthread library
;;

Then rebuild httpd using the following commands. This is where I had problems last week. I wasn't rebuilding this correctly...

apachectl stop
cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/httpd
make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper obj
make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper cleandir
make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper depend
make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper
make -f Makefile.bsd-wrapper install

Then restart apache. Do this every time you install a new version of OpenBSD and you'll be able to use mod_wsgi.

Afer some more tweeking of the settings, I was able to get a sample django project to run under mod_wsgi. However, it wasn't without its quarks...

When I was testing the admin site under wsgi, I noticed that none of the css or other media files where showing up. I know it wasn't the project because it looked fine when using the fcgi method. I spent the better part of a day picking the site apart to try to understand why the media information wasn't displaying. I was using alias left and right and everything in between but nothing was working. After googling for a few minutes, I landed back on mod_wsgi's site on the configuration guidelines under the hosting static files anchor. The link to the actual spot is here. Well it turns out that the only time the Alias module takes precedence over WSGIScriptAlias on Apache 1.3 is when mod_wsgi is loaded before the mod_alias module. Ok, so I shoot over to the httpd.conf file to set mod_wsgi to load first when I notice that mod_alias isn't even listed in the conf file. Wait a minute, so that mean... ahh crap. mod_alias is statically compiled into OpenBSD's apache. So in order for alias to work with wsgi is to recompile apache again....shit....

Nope, ain't gonna do it just for the media files. That's just too much work for something this small. An easier, and the recommended way per the django folks, is to just setup another site or virtual host just to host these files and point to that site in the settings.py file in the project. Like so:

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX='http://localhost:8180/media/'

You can set the alias with the virtual host like you would normally, just make sure you point it to the correct chroot path where the django files are kept. On OpenBSD, this should be:

/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/media

This would probably be a better setup anyway because you don't have to worry about aliasing the media files for every django project you do. But going the mod_wsgi route on OpenBSD, it's really the only way.

With this being said, this may be the way to go in the future. However, since mod_wsgi is not in ports (yet) and considering the recompiling needed in order for it to work, you probably won't get much support as you would the fastcgi method of setting up django on Openbsd's chroot apache server. But at least the options are starting to grow...