Redirection: mod_wsgi and django

Question

following this guide, I have setup Mailman 3 with Apache and mod_wsgi on a Debian server.

The .conf-file of my virtualhost:

ErrorLog /var/log/mailman-web/mailman-web.log
CustomLog /var/log/mailman-web/mailman-web_access.log combined
WSGISocketPrefix run/wsgi
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName XXXXXXX
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

    # Here, use the value of the STATIC_ROOT variable in your Django configuration file (production.py)
    Alias /robots.txt  /usr/local/mailman/mailman-bundler/var/mailman-web/static/hyperkitty/robots.txt
    Alias /favicon.ico /usr/local/mailman/mailman-bundler/var/mailman-web/static/hyperkitty/favicon.ico
    Alias /static      /usr/local/mailman/mailman-bundler/var/mailman-web/static

    <Directory "/usr/local/mailman/mailman-bundler/var/mailman-web/static">
        Order deny,allow
        Allow from all
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    WSGIScriptAlias / /usr/local/mailman/mailman-bundler/bin/mailman-web.wsgi
    WSGIDaemonProcess mailman-web display-name=mailman-web maximum-requests=1000 processes=1 threads=1 python-path=/usr/local/mailman/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages

        <Directory "/usr/local/mailman/mailman-bundler/bin">
            <Files mailman-web.wsgi>
                    Order deny,allow
                    Allow from all
                    Require all granted
            </Files>
            WSGIProcessGroup mailman-web
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

The problem I have with this setup is, when I go to http://myhost/ the wsgi script redirects my browser to http://myhost/archives. I would like to have http://myhost/ redirected to http://myhost/mailman3 and not http://myhost/archives.

Trying to find out where mailman decides to return the archives subdirectory, I looked into the wsgi script defined in the apache .conf-file but there is not much more happening then importing some classes and calling another script. Following this script I landed in the file ´./eggs/Django-1.10.4-py2.7.egg/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py`, specifically this part:

148 class WSGIHandler(base.BaseHandler):
149     request_class = WSGIRequest
150 
151     def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
152         super(WSGIHandler, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
153         self.load_middleware()
154 
155     def __call__(self, environ, start_response):
156         set_script_prefix(get_script_name(environ))
157         signals.request_started.send(sender=self.__class__, environ=environ)
158         try:
159             request = self.request_class(environ)
160         except UnicodeDecodeError:
161             logger.warning(
162                 'Bad Request (UnicodeDecodeError)',
163                 exc_info=sys.exc_info(),
164                 extra={
165                     'status_code': 400,
166                 }
167             )
168             response = http.HttpResponseBadRequest()
169         else:
170             response = self.get_response(request)
171 
172         response._handler_class = self.__class__
173 
174         status = '%d %s' % (response.status_code, response.reason_phrase)
175         response_headers = [(str(k), str(v)) for k, v in response.items()]
176         for c in response.cookies.values():
177             response_headers.append((str('Set-Cookie'), str(c.output(header=''))))
178         start_response(force_str(status), response_headers)
179         if getattr(response, 'file_to_stream', None) is not None and environ.get('wsgi.file_wrapper'):
180             response = environ['wsgi.file_wrapper'](response.file_to_stream)
181         return response

I guess that the decision of the subdirectory returned happens somewhere here but I could be wrong, not sure.

What I tried so far: In the apache conf file I added a line Redirect permanent / http://myhost/mailman3 but this made apache go into a redirection loop ending in a url like http://myhost/mailman3mailman3mailman3....

I hope someone can help me with this problem.

Thanks in advance!

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 05 '17 at 16:04

I guess that the decision of the subdirectory returned

This is a Django project, so urls are not about subdirectories, they are matched to "view" functions in Django. In this case, the "decision" happens here:

https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman-bundler/blob/master/mailman_web/urls.py

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^$',RedirectView.as_view(url=reverse_lazy('hyperkitty.views.index.index'))),
    url(r'^mailman3/', include('postorius.urls')),
    url(r'^archives/', include('hyperkitty.urls')),
    url(r'', include('social.apps.django_app.urls', namespace='social'), {"SSL": True}),
    url(r'', include('django_browserid.urls'), {"SSL": True}), 
)

and you can see that the "root" url ("r'^$'") is set to redirect to hyperkitty.views.index.index (hyperkitty being the archiver)

If you want to have the root url redirecting to "/mailman3/" instead, you'll have to change the first url() line to

url(r'^$',RedirectView.as_view(url="/mailman3/")),

Note that you'll then have to maintain this fork each time you update the package.

NB : there are "better" (safer / cleaner / easier to maintain) ways to do the same thing (by using your own django settings module instead of the default and making it's ROOT_URL_CONF point to your owner copy/pasted/edited version of this urls.py file, and finally by using a proper reverse_lazy instead of hardcoding the url), but if you don't know much about Django the above (somewhat Q&D) solution is by far the simplest.

Make sure you document your modifications so anyone having to maintain your installation knows about it, and possibly take time to learn the "better ways" (which means reading Django's documentation on how to specificy the settings module to use etc), as this will make your setup easier to maintain. — bruno desthuilliers, Jan 12 '17 at 13:51

Redirection: mod_wsgi and django

1 Answers1