[ome-users] Problems setting up production OMERO using 'mod_wsgi'

[Todd H. Stokes]

Hello,

I demo'ed OMERO 4.2 for a week or so by connecting to the packaged 
Django demo server on port 8000 per the instructions on the site. The 
OMERO distribution was unzipped into a folder on my user desktop on our 
server. I created a lot of data in the database, which I would like to 
preserve through the process of "upgrading" to a production web server.

I figured out how to host python code in apache using mod_wsgi (which is 
recommended to replace mod_python and is pretty similar). Then I figured 
out where to change permissions on all the directories and where to set 
various path variables so that the apache user would find the right 
versions of all the dependencies (hint: "universal settings" in 
/etc/profile doesn't seem to apply to apache).

Finally, I commented out the "sys.exit(1)" line of code in:
omero-dist/lib/python/omeroweb/settings.py
because even though my settings were in place, it always executed the 
exit when calling through the WSGI interface. (I don't know how to 
verify that the settings were successfully loaded, though).

At this point, I can see the login screen, but none of the credentials 
that worked on my demo server are working.

This web server is running a number of other web services, so my WSGI 
config looks like this:
WSGIScriptAlias /omero 
/home/tstokes/Desktop/SRM_tcga/OME/omero/wsgi-scripts/django.wsgi
and my application host variable is set up like this:
APPLICATION_HOST='http://hermes.bme.gatech.edu/omero'

A typical authentication error from the OMEROweb.log is attached. In 
other cases, I don't get the password checked error in the log or the 
"Error: Client version does not match server, please contact 
administrator" on the page. Instead the page simply refreshes despite 
the log showing no error (second attachment). I think this may indicate 
that the pages redirects are confused. The third attachment shows the 
apache error log, with requests being generated to both appmedia and 
webclient URLs without the necessary '/omero' part of the path.

One major point of confusion for me is in the instructions at:
http://www.openmicroscopy.org.uk/site/support/omero4/server/install_web
there is a sample mod_python configuration code snip that includes the line:
SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE omeroweb.settings
mod_wsgi uses a similar instruction, but I can't find any guide to what 
the file 'omeroweb.settings' should contain. For now, I copied my 
custom_settings.py file to this file name.

If I can get the setup working, I would like to move the omero 
distribution folder out of my home directory (where it must be open to 
access by the apache user) and into the directory of a new 'omero' user. 
I've started this process in parallel, but I am running into the same 
authentication issue on that instance, also.

If necessary, I can document more completely the steps that I've taken. 
They might be helpful in generating new documentation that addresses 
this mod_wsgi case.

Thanks!
Todd