Card store project #2: Installing Satchmo, Django, PostgreSQL, and Apache on Ubuntu at Slicehost

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm planning to set up an e-commerce site using the Satchmo shopping cart framework. Satchmo is built on the Django web framework which is written in the Python programming language. Satchmo has a lot of features built in which means it saves you a lot of work implementing them yourself. Check out this video introduction to Satchmo at this year's DjangoCon for more information.

After reading this discussion on the Satchmo mailing list, I decided to use Slicehost for hosting my site. Their cheapest plan provides 256MB of RAM for $20/month. Here are my notes on setting up Satchmo and Django with PostgreSQL, Apache, and mod_python on Ubuntu Intrepid at Slicehost. It seems lighttpd and nginx are popular lightweight alternatives to Apache on VPS setups. I do not know too much about this, but may explore these in the future.

Note, I don't describe how to setup a Satchmo project below. Maybe I will write another post about that later... For more information, see the Satchmo Installation documentation. Update 2008-12-12: I did write another blog post-- see Installing Satchmo, part 2.

Setup Slicehost

• Sign up for an account at http://www.slicehost.com/ I chose Ubuntu Intrepid for my operating system and named my slice "toad".
• I followed the following two excellent Slicehost tutorials: Ubuntu Setup Part 1 and Part 2.
• An important step is setting the system locale. Since I'm in the United States, I used the following commands (run as root):

  locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
  update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Install apache, mod_python, postgresql, and postgres python bindings

• Run as root (or use sudo):

  apt-get update
  apt-get upgrade
  apt-get dist-upgrade
  apt-get install apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork
  apt-get install libapache2-mod-python
  apt-get install postgresql
  apt-get install python-psycopg2

Configure apache

• I used the following Slicehost tutorials: Install Apache, Configure Apache Part 1, Configure Apache Part 2
• Of particular note, when installing apache, I got this warning:

  apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName

  Fix it by setting the ServerName in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf:

  ServerName yourdomain.com
  ServerTokens Prod

  See the Apache docs for more information on ServerName.

Install Django 1.0.2

• Run the following as root:

  cd /srv
  wget http://www.djangoproject.com/download/1.0.2/tarball/
  
  tar zxvf Django-1.0.2-final.tar.gz
  mkdir python-packages
  cd python-packages
  ln -s ../Django-1.0.2-final/django

Test Django (optional)

• Run the following as root:

  export PYTHONPATH=/srv/python-packages
  /srv/Django-1.0.2-final/django/bin/django-admin.py startproject testdjango

• Edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

  <location "/">
      SetHandler python-program
      PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
      SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE testdjango.settings
      PythonPath "['/srv', '/srv/python-packages'] + sys.path"
      PythonDebug On
  </location>

• Restart apache:

  /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

  Navigate to your slice's IP address in your browser and you should see the Django "It worked!" page.

Install Satchmo

Satchmo requires a number of external Python packages besides Django. Unfortunately, there isn't one standard way of installing Python packages. I decided to install most of them using Ubuntu's APT package management and one of them using easy_install, and one of them from source. Alternatively, I could have installed most of the packages with easy_install, and one of them with APT (and one of them from source). Or, I could have done it another way... sigh.

Note, I use the directory /srv/python-packages to store symbolic links to my needed python packages. Then I add this directory to my Python Path in the PYTHONPATH environment variable or in the Apache httpd.conf file. See my post, Somewhere on your Python path for more information.

• Install Satchmo prerequisites. Run the following commands as root:
  Install APT packages:

  apt-get update
  apt-get upgrade
  apt-get install python-crypto
  apt-get install python-yaml
  apt-get install python-imaging
  apt-get install python-reportlab
  apt-get install python-trml2pdf

  
  Install django-registration using easy_install:

  apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev build-essential
  easy_install django-registration

  
  Install comment_utils source:

  apt-get install subversion
  mkdir -p /srv/python-packages/dist
  cd /srv/python-packages/dist
  svn co http://django-comment-utils.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/comment_utils/ 
  mv comment_utils comment_utils_rev92
  cd /srv/python-packages
  ln -s dist/comment_utils_rev92 comment_utils

• Install Satchmo 0.8. Run the following as root: Update 2008-12-12: I changed this to use release 0.8 instead of the SVN trunk version.

  cd /srv
  wget http://www.satchmoproject.com/snapshots/satchmo-0.8.tgz
  tar zxvf satchmo-0.8.tgz
  cd /srv/python-packages
  ln -s ../satchmo-0.8/satchmo

  To install the SVN trunk version instead,

  cd /srv
  svn co svn://satchmoproject.com/satchmo/trunk
  mv trunk satchmo_revXXXX
  cd /srv/python-packages
  ln -s ../satchmo_revXXXX/satchmo

Setup PostgreSQL¶

I followed the instructions at Punteney.com for setting up Django and Postgres on Slicehost.

• If you didn't already install Postgres above, run the following as root:

  apt-get install postgresql
  apt-get install python-psycopg2

• Change the password for the "postgres" Unix user. (run as root or use sudo)

  passwd -d postgres
  su postgres -c passwd

• Change password for "postgres" user in the database. (From Punteney's article, "It's convenient to have the two passwords match, but not required.")

  su postgres -c psql template1

  ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'postgres_user_password';
  template1=\q

• Create django user:

  su postgres
  createuser -P django_user

  Punteney says to answer no to all here. Remember the password to put in Django settings.py file. (For this example, I set the password to my_password.)
• Create a database. Still su'ed as the "postgres" user:

  psql template1

  CREATE DATABASE django_db OWNER django_user ENCODING 'UTF8';
  \q

  exit

  (exit from postgres su)
• Configure access to the database. Edit /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/pg_hba.conf:

  local   all         postgres                          ident sameuser
  local   django_db   django_user                       md5

• Restart the postgres server:

  /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 restart

• In your Django project, use the following database settings in settings.py:

  DATABASE_ENGINE = 'postgresql_psycopg2'
  DATABASE_NAME = 'django_db'
  DATABASE_USER = 'django_user'
  DATABASE_PASSWORD = 'my_password'
  DATABASE_HOST = ''
  DATABASE_PORT = ''

• Run syncdb:

  cd /srv/yourproject
  python manage.py syncdb

Setup a domain name

• Register for a domain name. Google for "domain registration" for options.
• Follow the Slicehost directions for creating DNS records. This includes setting the nameservers at your domain registration service to use Slicehost's nameservers (ns1.slicehost.net, ns2.slicehost.net, ns3.slicehost.net).