Python2 & Python3 on the same Apache server

Notes on setting up a python 3 application on an apache server already running python 2 applications. This covers Flask, mod_wsgi-express, Apache2 & HTTPS support. 

For my latest personal project – a web app allowing my wife to fetch activities tracked on her garmin GPS watch & upload them to runkeeper – I finally decided to take the plunge & switch to Python 3.(1)When I began my PhD way back in 2012 and started learning Python, library support for Python 3 wasn’t yet complete enough for me and I’ve been stuck on Python 2 since. All was well when testing locally using Flask’s built in webserver, but things got tricky when I tried to deploy on my VPS where Apache was already serving Python 2 applications.

Running both isn’t directly possible, though the linked page starts to explain the solution. I found bits of this scattered across the web, but no complete descriptions. Hopefully this post might help others in a similar position. Throughout, I will show the setup using paths on my system, with a Flask application deployed in /var/www/apps/garmin with a wsgi script called flask.wsgi, which we want to serve on the URL /garmin .

mod_wsgi-express

What makes this possible at all is mod_wsgi-express. Using the standard mod_wsgi, Apache uses an embedded Python, which prevents running two versions simultaneously. Instead, mod_wsgi-express configures its own apache instance, which can target whatever Python version we like. There is a pip module, which provides mod_wsgi-express though you will need python & apache headers installed (e.g.  apt-get install python3-dev apache2-dev).

We can then start a new web server using the following:

This of course needs to be run as a user that can access these files. The –reload-on-changes means that we do not have to restart the server after making changes to our application. A new apache server will be listening on localhost:8000 by default, with the configuration & service scripts available in a directory something like /tmp/mod_wsgi-localhost:8000:106.

Apache2 reverse proxy

With mod_wsgi-express providing a local Apache server, we now need our public-facing Apache instance to forward requests. We set up a Reverse Proxy to forward requests to the appropriate resource to the internal webserver. We can do so this like so:

Unlike standard mod_wsgi, there is no need for us to configure WSGIDaemonProcess, WSGIScriptAlias, WSGIProcessGroup, WSGIApplicationGroup etc. Great!

Fixing the URLs

But wait! Although this appears to work and our site is being served to the world, all of our links that are relative to our site root (i.e. beginning with a /) are broken and point to the public-facing site root. This includes URLs generated by Flask. Fortunately, the fix is quite straightforward – though quite a few guides seem to have this slightly wrong. First, we update the public-facing apache configuration:

We then provide the –mount-point flag to mod_wsgi-express:

Finally, we need to make sure xhr requests understand where to route to. We can do this by passing through the script root in our base Flask template:

We then simply prefix this to any site-relative links generated Javascript.

HTTPS support

The final challenge was providing HTTPS support – since we’re forced to scrape Garmin’s website, users must provide their garmin username and password. With an SSL certificate in place, at least they’re not sent in the clear(2)Yes, this really isn’t nice – originally I’d planned to keep this a private application for my wife and keep her credentials on the server, but this at least means it could be used by more than one person and means I don’t have to authenticate users myself. Using the absolutely awesome Let’s Encrypt, I setup a free, signed HTTPS certificate.

The problem is that the internal, forwarded request is a standard HTTP request (not really a security issue; all internal traffic). However, this means URLs constructed by Flask will use HTTP and not HTTPS. This might not be a problem for most people if you’re forwarding HTTP requests to HTTPS but it’s a huge issue if the URL were to be used in, say, a hash function as in the Oauth redirect_uri! To fix, make sure the public-facing Apache sets an appropriate header:

and mod_wsgi-express knows to trust such a header:

In newer versions of Flask – I’m running 0.12.2 — this is good enough and Flask will take care of the rest. It appears that older versions might not to so automatically and you may need to experiment. However, AFAICT the ProxyFix shouldn’t be necessary as our http server is correctly setting the headers for us.

Aside: certbot doesn’t understand WSGI directives

certbot, the tool provided by Let’s Encrypt to auto-configure your setup, doesn’t yet properly understand WSGI directives. In particular, the name given to each WSGIDaemonProcess must be unique. certbot attempts to duplicate these, causing an Apache config error & certbot to rollback the changes. For now, the simplest fix is to comment out such lines before using certbot & then uncomment one of each (or both, renaming the HTTPS daemon process).

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1. When I began my PhD way back in 2012 and started learning Python, library support for Python 3 wasn’t yet complete enough for me and I’ve been stuck on Python 2 since
2. Yes, this really isn’t nice – originally I’d planned to keep this a private application for my wife and keep her credentials on the server, but this at least means it could be used by more than one person and means I don’t have to authenticate users myself