By Peter Hansen VP Clear Cloud Networks with Clear Wire

Today I had the task of installing a development server running the Django Python framework for one of our web developers.

I learned a few things and I figured a quick tutorial might help someone else out. None of this covers new ground, but perhaps another telling of the story will help someone out there. I started from scratch, with a basic install of Ubuntu 7.04 Server Edition. I did not choose any extra packages, such as the LAMP option or DNS server. If you are starting off with a LAMP server already installed, or a different version, the steps will be similiar, but you may need to adapt some commands to

get them to work.

Install server software

Install Apache, Mod_Python, MySQL and MySQLdb. MySQLdb is the database bindings for MySQL. Django also supports PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQLite. If you choose

to use a different database server, be sure to install the appropriate Python bindings.

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-python sudo
         apt-get install
         mysql-server python-mysqldb

Install the Django source code

At this point you have a couple of options. You could “apt-get install” a Django package, install an official release or install the development version. I chose to

install the development version because it contains the latest bug fixes and features.

We’ll be checking out the latest version from its Subversion repository. You’ll want to be in your home directory when you do this.

cd ~/   svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk/ django_src

Python won’t recognize Django unless it is installed in the “site-packages” directory, so instead we just create a

symbolic link to the source code in our home directory. Run the first command to find out the path to your “site-packages” directory.

Then use it in the second command, in place of “YOUR-DIR”. Lastly, copy the django-admin.py file into /usr/local/bin so that we don’t have to qualify the

command with the full path to the file.

python -c "from
         distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print get_python_lib()"   ln -s `pwd`/django_src/django 

YOUR-DIR/django   sudo
         cp ~/django_src/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin

Create Django’s directories

Next we need to create some directories that Django will use. Once again, create these under your home directory.

cd ~/
           mkdir django_projects   mkdir django_templates   mkdir media

Then we need to create some symbolic links in your webroot. The default webroot for an Apache2

installation on Ubuntu is /var/www. We are going to create a link to the media folder in your home directory, and a link to the admin_media folder which is

provided in the Django source code.

cd /var/www   sudo ln -s  ~/media
         media   sudo ln
         -s ~/django_src/django/contrib/admin/media admin_media

Create a Django project

Move into your Django projects directory that we just created. We will be starting a

new project using Django’s command line utility. This will give us a basic directory

structure and the necessary configuration files. In my example I named the project “myproject.”

Feel free to choose any name, as long as it does not conflict with any built-in Python or Django components.

In particular, this means you should avoid using names like django (which will conflict with Django itself)

or site (which conflicts with a built-in Python package).

cd
         ~/django_projects   django-admin.py startproject myproject

Edit the myproject/settings.py file and change the following sections:

1. Uncomment and change the ADMINS setting

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   ADMINS = (   ('Your Name', 'your_email@domain.com'),   )

2. Enter your database settings. You will need your database, username and password.
4. Most likely your database server is running on the same server,
6. so leave DATABASE_HOST blank.
7. Change your timezone if necesary.
8. Point Django at the template directory we created.

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   TEMPLATE_DIRS = (   "/home/YOUR_USERNAME/django_templates"     # Put strings here,   like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates".   )

9. Do the same thing for the media url and directory we created earlier.
10. Set the admin media directory that we created in your webroot

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    # URL prefix for admin media -- CSS, JavaScript and images. Make sure to use a     # trailing slash.   # Examples: "http://foo.com/media/", "/media/".   ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/admin_media/'

11. And finally, add the admin application to your install applications

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    INSTALLED_APPS = (   'django.contrib.auth',     'django.contrib.contenttypes',   'django.contrib.sessions',     'django.contrib.sites',   'django.contrib.admin',   )

After making all those changes to the configuration we need to synchronize the Django database.

Youll also get a prompt asking you if you�d like to create a superuser account for the authentication system. Go ahead and do that.

django-admin.py syncdb

Then
         your install is semi completed....see clear cloud link on hm pg....