Apache and mod_wsgi

In production, you should create a dedicated user for RDMO. All steps for the installation, which do not need root access, should be done using this user. As before, we assume this user is called rdmo and it’s home is /srv/rdmo and therefore your rdmo-app is located in /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app.

Install the Apache server and mod_wsgi using:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3  # for python3
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi      # for python2.7

# CentOS
sudo yum install httpd mod_wsgi                   # only for python2.7

Next create a virtual host configuration. Sadly, the different distributions use different versions of Apache and mod_wsgi and therefore require a slightly different setup:

For Debian/Ubuntu use:

# in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

        Alias /static /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/static_root/
        <Directory /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/static_root/>
            Require all granted
        </Directory>

        WSGIDaemonProcess rdmo user=rdmo group=rdmo \
            home=/srv/rdmo/rdmo-app python-home=/srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/env
        WSGIProcessGroup rdmo
        WSGIScriptAlias / /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/config/wsgi.py process-group=rdmo

        <Directory /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/config/>
            <Files wsgi.py>
                Require all granted
            </Files>
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

for CentOS 7:

# in /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf                 on RHEL/CentOS
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/

        Alias /static /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/static_root/
        <Directory /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/static_root/>
            Require all granted
        </Directory>

        WSGIDaemonProcess rdmo user=rdmo group=rdmo home=/srv/rdmo/rdmo-app \
            python-path=/srv/rdmo/rdmo-app:/srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/env/lib/python2.7/site-packages
        WSGIProcessGroup rdmo
        WSGIScriptAlias / /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/config/wsgi.py process-group=rdmo

        <Directory /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/config/>
            <Files wsgi.py>
                Require all granted
            </Files>
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Restart the Apache server. RDMO should now be available on YOURDOMAIN. Note that the Apache user needs to have access to /srv/rdmo/rdmo-app/static_root/.

As you can see from the virtual host configurations, the static assets, like CSS and JavaScript files are served independent from the WSGI-python script. In order to do so they need to be gathered in the static_root directory. This can be archived by running:

python manage.py collectstatic

in your virtual environment.

In order to apply changes to the RDMO code (e.g. after an upgrade) the webserver needs to be reloaded or the config/wsgi.py file needs to apear modified. This can be done using the touch command:

touch config/wsgi.py

Also, the collectstatic command has to be executed again. Both can be achived using:

python manage.py deploy

in your virtual environment.