I spent a couple of hours today trying to figure out how to configure Apache Web Server on Mac OS X to execute Python scripts, so I thought I would document the process for my own reference.<\/p>\n
OS X is preinstalled with Apache and Python. Apache executable (apachectl) is at \/usr\/sbin\/apachectl and Python is at \/usr\/bin\/python. But the configurations for Apache are at \/etc\/apache2, specifically in the file httpd.conf. If you open the file and look for DocumentRoot, you will find that default document root is set to\u00a0\/Library\/WebServer\/Documents.<\/p>\n
I did not want to change the default doc root but at the same time did not want to store my scripts in the default folder. I could have created a virtual host or an alias. I decided to do the later because\u00a0it is simpler than creating virtual host; and I was configuring Python for development only. So just below the document root setting I added the alias –<\/p>\n
DocumentRoot \"\/Library\/WebServer\/Documents\"\r\nAlias \/py \/Users\/Ram\/Sites\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\nThe idea was to access my Python scripts using url localhost\/py\/*.py.<\/p>\n
And based on the information at “HOWTO Use Python in the web<\/a>“, “Apache Tutorial: Dynamic Content with CGI<\/a>” and some of the tutorials online, I added directory settings for the alias –<\/p>\n
\n<Directory<\/span> \"\/Users\/Ram\/Sites\"<\/span>><\/span>\r\n Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +ExecCGI\r\n AllowOverride All\r\n Order allow,deny\r\n Allow from all\r\n AddHandler cgi-script .py\r\n<\/Directory><\/span>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/div>\nI create a simple test file test.py in \/Users\/Ram\/Sites with following content –<\/p>\n
\n#!\/usr\/bin\/python<\/span>\r\nprint<\/span> 'Content-Type: text\/html<\/span>\\n\\n<\/span>'<\/span>\r\n\r\nprint<\/span> \"Apache-Python config working!\"<\/span><\/pre>\n<\/div>\nSet execute permission for this file (chomod +x test.py).<\/p>\n
I then restarted Apache – actually first stopped it (sudo apachectl stop) and then started again (sudo apachectl start). I read somewhere that restart option does not work.
\nI then browsed to localhost\/py\/test.py and expected it to display\u00a0“Apache-Python config working!”. But instead I got “403 Forbidden You don’t have permission to access …” error. When I checked the error log (at \/var\/log\/apache2) I saw –<\/p>\n“Permission denied: access to \/py\/test.py denied (filesystem path ‘\/Users\/Ram\/Sites’) because search permissions are missing on a component of the path”<\/span> error.<\/p>\n