web2py deployment: Apache, Nginx and Plesk Panel

[lesssugar]

Does anyone have experience with setting up web2py with Plesk Panel preinstalled on the server?

 

I'm using a VPS with one IP, CentOS 6.6. Initially I wanted to setup Nginx with uWSGI, however Plesk won't work in this configuration (it needs Apache). Apache service could be stopped permanently and web2py will work just fine on Nginx, but at the same time Plesk Panel would be usless.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the choices I see are:

1. Adjust Plesk-driven Apache configuration (vhosts, httpd includes, etc.) in the way that it runs web2py application under the domain name (with Plesk working as intended)

2. Configure Nginx and Apache so they are running together: serve web2py application using Nginx and uWSGI, and keep Apache only for Plesk

Any ideas what would be the better solution and how to achieve any of these? Unfortunately, I'm not an admin, so I'm honestly looking for a step-by-step instructions if possible, or at least any hint to start looking into.

Scripts provided under http://web2py.googlecode.com/hg/scripts are great, but none of them works with Plesk "magic".

[LightDot]

We've been running Plesk on our servers for more than a decade now but I'm afraid I don't have a ready-made & tested solution for Plesk and web2py. We're phasing Plesk out and a large part of our hosting infrastructure has been moved to a custom solution that's better suited for web2py too, among other things.

I should have probably worked out some details before giving a definitive answer, but 1) seems like a cleaner approach, if you intend to offer Plesk to your customers or actively use it yourself. Your customers will be wanting to use it to create databases, monitor disk usage and visitor statistics, etc. Even if you do move web2py hosts out of that environment (option 2) ), you'll still be wanting to integrate this new parallel hosting system into Plesk, at least partially. It can be done, I'm just not sure how much hacking would it require.

Regards

[lesssugar]

@LightDot, thanks for your reply. I agree that the first, clean option is the way to go.

So, I am trying to make web2py work on Apache, keeping access to Plesk. I will try to make this post up to date, in case anyone has similar issues.

First problems that have occurred:

1) After using the deployment script (http://web2py.googlecode.com/hg/scripts/setup-web2py-fedora.sh), Plesk is not available under :8443 port anymore (which seems to be occupied by other process). I'm currently investigating that and trying to get Plesk back to working state.

2) Even after creating a new vhost for my web2py application via Plesk, it seems that the default vhost is served (/var/www/vhosts/default). Changing this is a mystery for me at this point, but I'll keep digging.

Anyone who might have clues on any of these issues is welcome to join :)

UPDATE:

Solution to problem no. 1) 

To allow accessing Plesk Panel on port 8443 after the deployment script is complete, go to /etc/sysconfig/iptables, add the following rule: -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8443 -j ACCEPT and restart the firewall with: service iptables restart

[LightDot]

Er... why would you run a VPS deployment script on a server with a working control panel..? I hope you have backups :/

If 1) is still your goal, the best thing you could do now is to try and revert everything the deployment script broke, then rethink your approach. I'd advise you to follow Plesk documentation about using python and/or custom vhost includes. There are several approaches you could try, but the point is, use Plesk to get web2py working. Anyway, you'll have to fix your Plesk installation before you can even attempt that.

Regards

On Friday, November 14, 2014 11:41:25 AM UTC+1, lesssugar wrote:

@LightDot, thanks for your reply. I agree that the first, clean option is the way to go.

So, I am trying to make web2py work on Apache, keeping access to Plesk. I will try to make this post up to date, in case anyone has similar issues.

First problems that have occurred:

1) After using the deployment script (http://web2py.googlecode.com/hg/scripts/setup-web2py-fedora.sh), Plesk is not available under :8443 port anymore (which seems to be occupied by other process). I'm currently investigating that and trying to get Plesk back to working state.

2) Even after creating a new vhost for my web2py application via Plesk, it seems that the default vhost is served (/var/www/vhosts/default). Changing this is a mystery for me at this point, but I'll keep digging.

Anyone who might have clues on any of these issues is welcome to join :)

UPDATE:

Solution to problem no. 1) 

To allow accessing Plesk Panel on port 8443 after the deployment script is complete, go to /etc/sysconfig/iptables, add the following rule: -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8443 -j ACCEPT and restart the firewall with: service iptables restart

On Friday, November 14, 2014 2:04:21 AM UTC+1, LightDot wrote:

[peter]

Sorry for a late reply to this.

I had nginx working under plesk with a live site. My site suddenly crashed after a plesk update. It took me a long time to work out what the problem was. It was that plesk decided to include nginx within their setup. This interacted badly with my nginx setup. My hosting company did not know about these under the bonnet changes to plesk and therefore were very unhelpful. There seemed no way that they could guarantee that future plesk updates would not interact negatively with my system. I decided it was much better to get a bare vps and have everything under my control. So if you want nginx (which is great) I would avoid nginx.

The only cost to me of going to to a bare vps was that I had to handle email myself with postfix. This is not a big deal.

Peter