Not able to run django with lighttpd

Question

I am learning Django and configuring Lighttpd as web server.

My Lighttpd Server Configuration for running Django is like below

server.modules = (
        "mod_access",
        "mod_alias",
        "mod_compress",
        "mod_redirect",
        "mod_scgi",
        "mod_proxy",
)

server.document-root        = "/var/www/html"
server.upload-dirs          = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" )
server.errorlog             = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
server.pid-file             = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid"
server.username             = "www-data"
server.groupname            = "www-data"
server.port                 = 8899


index-file.names            = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.lighttpd.html" )
url.access-deny             = ( "~", ".inc" )
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" )

compress.cache-dir          = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/"
compress.filetype           = ( "application/javascript", "text/css", "text/html", "text/plain" )

# default listening port for IPv6 falls back to the IPv4 port
## Use ipv6 if available
#include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl " + server.port
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl"
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl"

scgi.protocol = "uwsgi"
scgi.server = (
  "/" => (( "host" => "127.0.0.1", "port" => 9000, "check-local" => "disable" )),
)

I created Django app polls (as part of Django tutorials mentioned in the Django documentation) where in the first part it is to create a simple view under polls/view.py

from django.http import HttpResponse


def index(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the polls index.")

I did as is mentioned in the documentation and able to get above page by executing following command for uwsgi

uwsgi --http 127.0.0.1:9000 --chdir ~/new_project/mysite --wsgi-file mysite/wsgi.py

And I got the webpage as expected

But here is the problem when I want to open from Lighttpd web server it is not happening I changed uwsgi command as required from uwsgi --http ... to uwsgi --uwsgi-socket ...

Below is what I received from browser

Not sure how to proceed to make it work? Any help will be highly appreciated

user_5251061 · Answer

I guess, that I've run into a very similar issue. The fix is trivial. But since the combination of Django + uWSGI + Lighttpd seems to be somewhat unusual (in particular lighttpd is the uncommon piece here), it took way too lo to figure out. However, there is a nice repo showcasing this setup. In particular, the lighttpd.conf there was helpful. In the relevant section (scgi.server), I found this:

"fix-root-scriptname" => "enable"

The docs says (scgi.server shares most parameters with fastcgi.server):

"fix-root-scriptname": use this for backends with extension "/" (and check-local is disabled).

Since django urls end with / this fixed my issues. I don't get why this is not turned on by default and I'm not sure if there is any downside to enabling it. So far, I didn't find any. If somebody can add some insight on why this fixes the issue, I'd appreciate it.

user_1338888 · Answer

The error page you show above is from Django, so lighttpd is successfully connecting to the backend running uwsgi --uwsgi-socket.

"Hello World" examples for configuring lighttpd with uwsgi can be found at: https://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/HowToPythonWSGI

The Python code you posted imports HttpResponse and returns an HttpResponse.

from django.http import HttpResponse

def index(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the polls index.")

The HTTP protocol is different from the UWSGI protocol. A simple "Hello World" application:

def application(environ, start_response):
    start_response('200 OK', [('Content-Type', 'text/plain;charset=utf-8')])
    return ['Hello World!
']

user_4002633 · Answer

Your Django report makes it clear that polls/ is getting lost and it's possible (and worth checking) if it's landing in SCRIPT_NAME when Django expects it in PATH_INFO.

I run a Django site under lighttpd and I ran into trouble with SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO and wrote some middleware to solve that.

You're running uwsgi a little differently to me, I run it on unix socket not an http port and I point lighttp at that socket. And that may well make a difference, I don't know.

But you can check out what I did here:

https://github.com/bernd-wechner/CoGs/blob/master/django_lighttpd_middleware/__init__.py

It might and might not be helpful.

Not able to run django with lighttpd

3 Answers