I started by upgrading Python for my Dreamhost user. I followed my own post, except that I used Python 2.6 instead of 2.5. I missed one step that was caught by a pingback post:

In addition to the steps I outlined before:

$ mkdir opt
$ mkdir downloads
$ cd downloads
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.4/Python-2.6.4.tgz
$ tar xvzf Python-2.6.4.tgz
$ cd Python-2.6.4
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/ --enable-unicode=ucs4
$ make
$ make install

Next append

export PATH=$HOME/opt/bin/:$PATH

to your .bash_profile. Then test (from your home dir):

$ source .bash_profile
$ python -V
Python 2.6.4

If you don’t see Python 2.6.4 after typing python -V then you’ve already done something wrong.

I had to install the Python setuptools:

$ wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.6/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c9-py2.6.egg
$ sh setuptools-0.6c9-py2.6.egg

before installing Mysql-Python as before:

$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/mysql-python/mysql-python-test/1.2.3c1/MySQL-python-1.2.3c1.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ cd MySQL-python-1.2.2
$ python setup.py install

So this brought me to the point where I had an updated version of Python on my Dreamhost account.

Next to set up Django.

I looked at setting up Django with the Dreamhost script, which didn’t seem to work for me but I don’t remember why not. In the end I found SOASI’s post the most useful, although I did it a little differently.

First up, configure your domain.

In Dreamhost panel -> Domains -> Manage Domains click on the domain you want to put your app on (in the example we will set domain.com), and activate “Ruby on Rails Passenger (mod_rails)” option.

Create a public directory in that domain.

Next make sure you have your database setup. You don’t have to have a database for Django now, but if you plan to use one now is a good time to get that set up.

Next I downloaded and installed Django.

I liked the directory structure suggested by Dreamhost. This will work well for having one Django directory and use it for multiple projects on multiple domains.

 /home/username/django/
   source (your django svn checkout, or skip it and use Dreamhost's site-package of Django)
   projects
   applications (any reusable applications shared between projects)

Finally, I added the media and admin media, and also the passenger_wsgi.py

import sys, os
if sys.version < "2.6": os.execl("/home/user/opt/bin/python2.6", "python2.6", *sys.ar
gv)
sys.path.insert(1, "/home/user/django/source")
sys.path.insert(1, "/home/user/django/applications")
sys.path.insert(1, "/home/user/django/projects")
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = "project.settings"
import django.core.handlers.wsgi
application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

On /home/user/django/projects/myproject/settings.py file check settings:

MEDIA_ROOT = '/home/user/domain.com/public/media/'
MEDIA_URL = 'http://www.domain.com/media/'
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/admin_media/'

Create a symbolic link for admin_media:

cd /home/user/domain.com/public/
ln -s home/user/django/source/contrib/admin/media/ admin_media

Django and Python are still new to me, so you get what you pay for with this setup.

Note:
I found this today, and it looks like it could be a good setup too.

I found following the official tutorial sufficient in setting up Django on Dreamhost.

A couple of notes from this install:

1. There are a several sites that mention what to do after you make code changes, and have already accessed the site. I have found that “touch ~/mysite/dispatch.fcgi” is sufficient to reload my changes. But several sites mention performing a pkill or pkill -9 python2.5. I can see there are a couple of dispatch.fcgi processes running, but I haven’t seen a need to kill them yet, so I’m sticking with the touch command at this point.
2. I had to uncheck Extra Web Security for my Django domain in the dreamhost panel to get it to run correctly. I’ll double check this as I get development going, as it looks like others have Django running with extra web security enabled.

References:

• Jeff Croft’s Tutorial provides another description of essentially the same process. Keep in mind that this is 2 years old however.
• Ryan Kanno provides a cool idea for a development cycle in this environment

Ssh to your DH account, from the base dir…

$ mkdir opt
$ mkdir downloads
$ cd downloads
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.2/Python-2.5.2.tgz
$ tar xvzf Python-2.5.2.tgz
$ cd Python-2.5.2
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/ --enable-unicode=ucs4
$ make
$ make install

If that completes correctly, you can remove the tarball and the Python2.5.2 directory.

Next, update your path by adding:

export PATH=$HOME/opt/bin/:$PATH

to your .bash_profile. Then test:

$ source .bash_profile
$ python -V
Python 2.5.2

If you don’t see Python 2.5.2 after typing python -V then you’ve already done something wrong.

Next, update MySql-Python (from the downloads directory):

$ wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mysql-python/MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ cd MySQL-python-1.2.2
$ python setup.py install

Make sure the files extract into the ~/opt/lib/python2.5/site-packages/ directory as an egg file.

Now that we have everything upgraded nicely, we can move on to installing Django.

References:

Custom Python Install by LocalKineGrinds