Dreamhost - agh!
Bryant
to run on a basic Dreamhost account. I've followed the instructions at
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Django to the letter, and Django is
running just fine, from a command line. FCGI is working - my hello.fcgi
correctly responds with it cheery "Hello World!" Something in the
middle just isn't happening, though - every time that I request
django.fcgi, django.fcgi/admin, /admin (when I've got my .htaccess file
turned on), etc. I get the following in my error log:
FastCGI: comm with (dynamic) server
"/home/[username]/[domainname]/django.fcgi" aborted: (first read) idle
timeout (120 sec)
FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server
"home/[username]/[domainname]/django.fcgi"
Pleas:
1) Are there any users out there who got Django working on Dreamhost
who can share the secret? How do you make it work?
2) Since Dreamhost supports FCGI "only for use with Ruby on Rails,"
should they be on the list
(http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoFriendlyWebHosts) of
Django-supporting hosts? I chose them because they appeared here on the
list and fit my (admittedly pitiful) student budget...
3) Please forgive my creation of yet another newbie Dreamhost post if
you're not involved. I just want to be one of the cool kids!
Jeremy Jones
"Bryant" <bryant...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I posted once, earlier, about problems I've been having getting Django
> to run on a basic Dreamhost account. I've followed the instructions at
> http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Django to the letter, and Django
> is running just fine, from a command line. FCGI is working - my
> hello.fcgi correctly responds with it cheery "Hello World!" Something
> in the middle just isn't happening, though - every time that I request
> django.fcgi, django.fcgi/admin, /admin (when I've got my .htaccess
> file turned on), etc. I get the following in my error log:
>
> FastCGI: comm with (dynamic) server
> "/home/[username]/[domainname]/django.fcgi" aborted: (first read) idle
> timeout (120 sec)
> FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server
> "home/[username]/[domainname]/django.fcgi"
Yup. Seen that.
>
> Pleas:
> 1) Are there any users out there who got Django working on Dreamhost
> who can share the secret? How do you make it work?
Yes. First of all, fastcgi is a pain in the rear. Maybe it's just how
Dreamhost has it setup, but it's quirky as anything. 1) When you're
trying to get your app working, assuming you've followed the
instructions precisely, check your permissions. I believe I have my
file permissions all set to 755. And you probably want to make sure
the user for that domain is the same user who owns your files. I
suspect this probably isn't your problem since you are getting the
incomplete header thing. That seems like it's at least attempting to
execute. 2) Kill all of your fcgi processes and wait 15 minutes
before trying again. This seems to have been the majority of my
problem. I think Dreamhost has some fastcgi process monitor setup to
not allow fastcgi processes to die and spawn back too quickly. Also,
sometimes after you get the incomplete header, if you make the request
again, it just magically works.
> 2) Since Dreamhost supports FCGI "only for use with Ruby on Rails,"
> should they be on the list
> (http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoFriendlyWebHosts) of
> Django-supporting hosts?
Yes, because Django will work, but I don't think the official policy of
Dreamhost is to support Django apps like it will Dreamhost.
>I chose them because they appeared here on
> the list and fit my (admittedly pitiful) student budget...
Hee hee. Likewise, here, only I'm not a student.
> 3) Please forgive my creation of yet another newbie Dreamhost post if
> you're not involved. I just want to be one of the cool kids!
>
I'm starting to think if you want to be one of the cool kids, you need
to find hosting elsewhere. I've been moderately unhappy at times with
my Dreamhost account. I'll have to do some soul-searching when my year
is up as to whether I want to renew with them.
Hope this has been of even a small amount of value.
- jmj
Eugene Lazutkin
>
> FastCGI: comm with (dynamic) server
> "/home/[username]/[domainname]/django.fcgi" aborted: (first read) idle
> timeout (120 sec)
> FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server
> "home/[username]/[domainname]/django.fcgi"
I didn't see these messages before.
> Pleas:
> 1) Are there any users out there who got Django working on Dreamhost
> who can share the secret? How do you make it work?
It works without any problems. I don't know, if it depends on the plan.
Make sure you have all proper permissions on your files and you have
recent version of fcgi software.
> 2) Since Dreamhost supports FCGI "only for use with Ruby on Rails,"
> should they be on the list
> (http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoFriendlyWebHosts) of
> Django-supporting hosts? I chose them because they appeared here on the
> list and fit my (admittedly pitiful) student budget...
DreamHost supports fcgi for everybody. There are people who run perl web
sites like that. I contacted the support on several occasions asking
about fcgi, and I was never turned down because I run "unsupported"
applications.
> 3) Please forgive my creation of yet another newbie Dreamhost post if
> you're not involved. I just want to be one of the cool kids!
If it helps, I can send you my config files so you can compare. Just
drop me an e-mail.
Thanks,
Eugene
Adrian Holovaty
> I'm starting to think if you want to be one of the cool kids, you need
> to find hosting elsewhere. I've been moderately unhappy at times with
> my Dreamhost account. I'll have to do some soul-searching when my year
> is up as to whether I want to renew with them.
I've never used Dreamhost, but I'll just toss in my two cents that
having a dedicated server, with root access, is well worth it. I pay
$69 a month for a server with 1and1 (1and1.com). The price has risen
since then, but it's still kinda-sorta affordable in the grand scheme
of things if you're serious about making Web apps.
Note that I'm not affiliated with 1and1 in any way, and I'm sure there
are plenty of other (even cheaper) alternatives.
Adrian
--
Adrian Holovaty
holovaty.com | djangoproject.com
patrick k
dreamhost says:
"Currently demand for django is not very high. If the demand picks up we
will likely add direct support for it. This is why we added Ruby on Rails
support."
"It (Django) is currently not installed by default, again, because we do not
have that high of a demand for it. You are of course free to install it in
your home directory."
my experience:
installing django according to the wiki works fine. i don´t have problems
with getting django-apps up and running. but then, i´m having server
timeouts for about 50% of the time (dreamhost gave me 2 months for free but
that doesn´t really solve the problem).
i´m giving razorlogix a try now and i´d suggest to withdraw dreamhost from
the list of "django friendly web hosts".
thanks,
patrick
pbx
> I've never used Dreamhost, but I'll just toss in my two cents that
> having a dedicated server, with root access, is well worth it.
> of things if you're serious about making Web apps.
I totally agree. It's great to have root. If a dedicated server is too
spendy there's also the virtual private server (VPS) option -- I've
used Johncompanies.com's FreeBSD VPS service for the past two years,
and it's been great. They offer modest discounts for open source
developers, too.
pb
Graham King
I totally agree too ! The freedom of your own server (VPS) is well
worth it. I've used linode.com for over a year now and I love it. You
end up getting better at system administration skills (setting MySQL,
Apache, etc) and get a much better understanding of how everything fits
together.
Graham.
Eugene Lazutkin
>
> I totally agree too ! The freedom of your own server (VPS) is well
> worth it. I've used linode.com for over a year now and I love it. You
> end up getting better at system administration skills (setting MySQL,
> Apache, etc) and get a much better understanding of how everything fits
> together.
...but your own separate physical computer is even better. And for
moderately serious stuff you can use your own collocation facilities
spread around the globe, which can be supplemented by relatively cheap
Akamai offering. :-) The reality is that in many cases it is not about
trade-offs, it's about hard limit on your money. If I have $20/month to
burn, I cannot afford VPS or other nicer options. I guess this is the
case for many people, who use DreamHost.
Going back to DreamHost, I never had problems experienced by other
people. Guys that have several web sites on DreamHost say that it
apparently depends on server your web site is assigned to. All my web
sites are on pico. I don't know if you can ask for transfer. On the
other hand, different servers may have different quirks == different
stability issues, but they should be able run Django without problems.
In the case of the original poster, I suspect that the reason was
simpler than that: most probably misconfiguration of Python, wrong file
attributes, or forgetting to set up DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE correctly. I
offered him help, I didn't hear from him back, so these are all my
speculations.
Thanks,
Eugene
PythonistL
run on avalon server
Regards,
L.
Jan Claeys
> ...but your own separate physical computer is even better. And for
> moderately serious stuff you can use your own collocation facilities
> spread around the globe, which can be supplemented by relatively cheap
> Akamai offering. :-) The reality is that in many cases it is not about
> trade-offs, it's about hard limit on your money. If I have $20/month to
> burn, I cannot afford VPS or other nicer options. I guess this is the
> case for many people, who use DreamHost.
One can also try to find some friends who want to put some money
together to rent a dedicated server. Me and 3 friends have a dedicated
server from Hetzner.de, which means it costs each of us less than 10
euro/month (39 euro or about 47 USD per month for a dedicated server --
sometimes, like this month, they even have cheap servers for 29
euro/month).
--
Jan Claeys