Installing Django with Satchmo on Debian Etch

This is how I got Django and Satchmo set up on my Debian Etch box with Apache2, MySQL, mod_python and Memcached.

The machine I started with had Debian Etch installed as well as Apache2 and MySQL.

Note: I am assuming you are working as root on your machine. If not you will have to do sudo in front of all of the following commands.

Make sure that your /etc/apt/sources.list is up to date and then update your repositories and installed packages. I usually get my sources from here...
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade

Since it is a new server and my locales are not right, I reconfigure them.
# dpkg-reconfigure locales

Install GCC, G++ and Make so you can compile code
# apt-get install gcc g++ make

Install the newest version of Python (2.5.2 as of this writing).
# cd ~/
# wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.2/Python-2.5.2.tgz
# tar -zxvf Python*
# cd Python*
# ./configure --enable-shared
# make
# make install

Set up a config file for python.
# vi /etc/ld.so.conf.d/python2.5.conf

Put the following in it (path to the libpython2.5.so.1.0):
/usr/local/lib

Make the settings take effect.
# ldconfig

Make this version of python the default version.
# vi /usr/share/python/debian_defaults

Change the contents of this file to:
[DEFAULT]
# the default python version
default-version = python2.5

# all supported python versions
supported-versions = python2.4, python2.5

# formerly supported python versions
old-versions = python2.3

# unsupported versions, including older versions
unsupported-versions = python2.3

Create a symlink to point to the new version of python.
# rm /usr/bin/python
# ln -s /usr/local/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin/python

Set up MySQL (MySQL-python) to work with Python.
# apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
# cd ~/
# wget http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mysql-python/MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf MySQL-python*
# cd MySQL-python*
# python setup.py build
# python setup.py install

Installing mod_python for Apache2 in Debian Etch is a total PITA. Here are the steps I took to get it installed...
# apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev
# cd ~/
# wget http://ftp.wayne.edu/apache/httpd/modpython/mod_python-3.3.1.tgz
# tar -zxvf mod_python*
# cd mod_python*
# ./configure --with-apxs=/usr/bin/apxs2 --with-python=/usr/local/bin/python2.5
# make
# make install

Install the newest version of Django (1.0 as of this writing).
# cd ~/
# wget http://www.djangoproject.com/download/1.0/tarball/
# tar -zxvf Django*
# cd Django*
# python setup.py install

On my machine, this installed Django into /usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages.

Set up your Django project.
# cd ~/
# django-admin.py startproject mysite

Set up your MySQL database. Since my machine is a fresh install I need to set up a password first.
# mysqladmin -u root password PASSWORD
# mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE mysite CHARACTER SET utf8;

Set up your project settings in settings.py.
* Enter up your admin information.
* Enter up your database connection info.
* Change your timezone and language settings if needed.

Sync your installed apps and your database.
# cd ~/mysite
# python manage.py syncdb

Check this Django documentation page for how to set up mod_python.

You need to set up a directory where mod_python can extract eggs and you need to set up the permissions so it can write to it (don't use 777 as in my example in production).
# cd ~/mysite
# mkdir cache_directory
# chmod 777 cache_directory
# chown www-data cache_directory

Now set up a config file to import those settings.
# vi cache_file.py

Put the following lines in that file:
import os
os.environ['PYTHON_EGG_CACHE'] = '/absolute/path/to/cache_directory'

Configure mod_python to work with Apache2.
# vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Add the following lines to that file:
LoadModule python_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_python.so
PythonInterpreter mysite
PythonImport /absolute/path/to/cache_file.py mysite
<Location "/">
  SetHandler python-program
  PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
  SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE mysite.settings
  PythonOption django.root /mysite
  PythonDebug On
  PythonPath "['/path/to/project'] + sys.path"
</Location>

Restart Apache.
# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

At this point you should have a working Django install and you should be able to start adding apps...

Now lets get our install ready for Satchmo. We will need to install a bunch of things, as laid out on this page...

Install Python Imaging Library...
# cd ~/
# wget http://effbot.org/downloads/Imaging-1.1.6.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf Imaging*
# cd Imaging*
# python setup.py install

Install Python cryptography toolkit...
# cd ~/
# wget http://www.amk.ca/files/python/crypto/pycrypto-2.0.1.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf pycrypto*
# cd pycrypto*
# python setup.py install

Install ReportLab...
# apt-get install libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev
# cd ~/
# wget http://www.reportlab.org/ftp/ReportLab_2_2.tgz
# tar -zxvf ReportLab*
# cd ReportLab*
# python setup.py install

Install Tiny RML2PDF...
# cd ~/
# wget http://tinyforge.org/frs/download.php/1/trml2pdf.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf trml2pdf*
# cd trml2pdf*
# mv trml2pdf /usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages
# python
>>> import trml2pdf

Install django-comment-utils...
# cd ~/
# wget http://django-comment-utils.googlecode.com/files/comment_utils-0.3p1.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf comment_utils*
# cd comment_utils*
# python setup.py install

Install Django Registration...
# cd ~/
# wget http://django-registration.googlecode.com/files/django-registration-0.6.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf django-registration*
# cd django-registration*
# python setup.py install

Install Memcached for caching (including its dependencies and python bindings)...
# cd ~/
# wget http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.4.8-stable.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf libevent*
# cd libevent*
# ./configure
# make
# make install
Create a link so the memcached knows where to find the library...
# ln -s /usr/local/lib/libevent-1.4.so.2 /lib/libevent-1.4.so.2

# cd ~/
# wget http://danga.com/memcached/dist/memcached-1.2.6.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf memcached*
# cd memcached*
# ./configure
# make
# make install

# cd ~/
# wget ftp://ftp.tummy.com/pub/python-memcached/python-memcached-latest.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf python-memcached*
# cd python-memcached*
# python setup.py install

Start the memcached daemon...
# memcached -d -u www-data -m 32 127.0.0.1 -p 11211

Configure your django project to use memcached...
# cd ~/mysite
# vi settings.py

In that file add:
CACHE_BACKEND = 'memcached://127.0.0.1:11211/'

Install PyYaml...
# cd ~/
# wget http://pyyaml.org/download/pyyaml/PyYAML-3.05.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf PyYAML*
# cd PyYAML*
# python setup.py install

Install Docutils...
# cd ~/
# wget http://docutils.sf.net/docutils-snapshot.tgz
# tar -zxvf docutils-snapshot*
# cd docutils*
# python setup.py install

Install Django Threaded Multihost...
# cd ~/
# wget http://gosatchmo.com/static/files/threaded-multihost-1.1-source.tgz
# tar -zxvf threaded-multihost*
# cd django-threaded-multihost
# python setup.py install

Now you have all the prerequisites installed for Satchmo...
Its time to install Satchmo...
# apt-get install subversion
# cd ~/
# svn co svn://satchmoproject.com/satchmo/trunk
# cd trunk
# python setup.py install

Check it...
# cd ~/
# python
>>> import django
>>> import satchmo

If they both import fine, then you are all set... Enjoy...

To finish configuring your store check this page...

I like to have a clean machine, so I remove all of the source files after installs...
# cd ~/
# rm -rf Python* MySQL-python* mod_python* Django* Imaging* pycrypto* ReportLab* trml2pdf* comment_utils* django-registration* libevent* memcached* python-memcached* PyYAML* docutils* trunk* django-threaded-multihost threaded-multihost*