Django deployment problem in Apache/mod_wsgi. ImportError: Could not import settings 'site.settings'

Question

When I'm executing

django-admin.py startproject site

it works.
But if I'm only copying site folder it doesn't work.
Why?

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName django.stanislavfeldman.com

# Django settings
WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/django/wsgi_handler.py
WSGIDaemonProcess django.stanislavfeldman.com maximum-requests=200 stack-size=524288

ErrorLog /var/www/django/error.log
LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>

wsgi_handler.py:

import os, sys

sys.path.append('/var/www/django')

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'site.settings'

import django.core.handlers.wsgi

application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

show us the relevant wsgi config and apache/virtualhost .conf... — Paulo Scardine
is the absolute path to settings.py /var/www/django/site/settings.py? — Paulo Scardine
also check if the user that runs apache has permission to open files under /var/www/django. — Paulo Scardine
The example above is missing WSGIProcessGroup directive. Without that the WSGIDaemonProcess directive is meaningless. — Graham Dumpleton

Graham Dumpleton Graham Dumpleton · Accepted Answer · 2010-12-16T20:38:02

Ensure you have read:

http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/IntegrationWithDjango

and also watch this presentation:

http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/WhereToGetHelp?tm=6#Conference_Presentations

Your problem is going to be a sys.path or permissions issue which are both covered by the above.

That you are using 'maximum-requests=200 stack-size=524288' options to WSGIDaemonProcess directive makes me question whether you have referred to the mainstream documentation as basic instructions don't tell you to use them. Instead looks like you have used some arbitrary persons blog post for how to set it up, or relying on some folklore given to you on an IRC channel. :-)

Django deployment problem in Apache/mod_wsgi. ImportError: Could not import settings 'site.settings'

5 Answers