[SOLVED] How come Apache2 isn't recognizing the Django module installed to a virtual environment?

Issue

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04, and have libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3 and apache2 installed.

I have a Django project located at /home/usr/django_project/ and I created a python 3.8 virtual environment inside the django_project folder. I used pip3 install -r requirments.txt inside the virtual environment to install all the necessary dependencies.

My settings.py is as follows:

import os
import json

with open('/etc/django_personal_website-config.json') as config_file:
    config = json.load(config_file)


# Build paths inside the project like this: BASE_DIR / 'subdir'.
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
TEMPLATE_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')

# Quick-start development settings - unsuitable for production
# See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/howto/deployment/checklist/

# SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret!
SECRET_KEY = config['SECRET_KEY']

# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = False

ALLOWED_HOSTS = []


# Application definition

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'blog.apps.BlogConfig',
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]

ROOT_URLCONF = 'django_personal_website.urls'

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [TEMPLATE_DIR]
        ,
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'django_personal_website.wsgi.application'


# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/ref/settings/#databases

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}


# Password validation
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/ref/settings/#auth-password-validators

AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.MinimumLengthValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.CommonPasswordValidator',
    },
    {
        'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.NumericPasswordValidator',
    },
]


# Internationalization
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/topics/i18n/

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'

TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'

USE_I18N = True

USE_L10N = True

USE_TZ = True


# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/howto/static-files/

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

# Default primary key field type
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.2/ref/settings/#default-auto-field

DEFAULT_AUTO_FIELD = 'django.db.models.BigAutoField'

I created the superuser, migrated files to the static folder, and when I run the server using python3 manage.py runserver, it works fine.

However, I start running into issues with apache. Here's the config file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
    # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
    # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
    # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
    # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
    # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
    # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
    #ServerName www.example.com

    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html

    # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
    # error, crit, alert, emerg.
    # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
    # modules, e.g.
    #LogLevel info ssl:warn

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

    # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
    # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
    # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
    # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
    # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
    #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.
    
    Alias /static/ /home/webserver/django_personal_website/static/
    <Directory /home/webserver/django_personal_website/static>
    Require all granted
    </Directory>
    
     Alias /static/ /home/webserver/django_personal_website/media/
    <Directory /home/webserver/django_personal_website/media>
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    <Directory /home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website>
    <Files wsgi.py>
        Require all granted
    </Files>
    </Directory>

    WSGIScriptAlias / /home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website/wsgi.py process-group=django_app
    WSGIDaemonProcess django_app python-path=/home/webserver/django_personal_website python-home=/home/webserver/django_personal_website/venv/
    WSGIProcessGroup django_app

</VirtualHost>

# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

From all the other posts on I've read here and from looking in the docs this seems to be configured correctly, however when I do sudo service apache2 restart I get a 500 Internal Server Error.

When I look at the error log using sudo tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log I see this:

[Wed Apr 07 19:42:24.993712 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082190063360] [remote 192.168.1.211:52877] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:24.993739 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082190063360] [remote 192.168.1.211:52877]   File "/home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website/wsgi.py", line 12, in <module>
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:24.993742 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082190063360] [remote 192.168.1.211:52877]     from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:24.993749 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082190063360] [remote 192.168.1.211:52877] ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'django'
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:25.109710 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082089293568] [remote 192.168.1.211:52878] mod_wsgi (pid=9957): Target WSGI script '/home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website/wsgi.py' cannot be loaded as Python module.
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:25.109813 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082089293568] [remote 192.168.1.211:52878] mod_wsgi (pid=9957): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website/wsgi.py'.
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:25.109948 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082089293568] [remote 192.168.1.211:52878] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:25.110006 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082089293568] [remote 192.168.1.211:52878]   File "/home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website/wsgi.py", line 12, in <module>
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:25.110018 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082089293568] [remote 192.168.1.211:52878]     from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
[Wed Apr 07 19:42:25.110050 2021] [wsgi:error] [pid 9957:tid 140082089293568] [remote 192.168.1.211:52878] ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'django'

I'm really stuck here because I believe everything is configured properly in the config file and the WSGIDaemonProcess is pointing to the right spot but it just doesn't seem to see the django folder inside the site-packages folder.

Solution

This issue was fixed by adding

sys.path.append('/home/webserver/django_personal_website')
sys.path.append('/home/webserver/django_personal_website/django_personal_website')


sys.path.append('/home/webserver/django_personal_website/venv/lib/python3.7/site-packages')

to the wsgi.py file.

Answered By - Kolby Wilson

Answer Checked By - Clifford M. (WPSolving Volunteer)