Setting Up web2py2 on DreamHost

Aubrey Moore

Reference: http://www.bikmort.com/dokuwiki/web2py_on_dreamhost by Tim Korb. Accessed 2017-10-14.

Tim's directions worked very well for me with minor tweaks.

Create a fully-hosted domain at http://panel.dreamhost.com. I used web2py.guaminsects.net.
Site configuration options include:
- Remove WWW from beginning of name
- use PHP 7.0 FastCGI (default)
- use HTTPS
- use Passenger (Click OK on dialog about /public)
Use a shell account to open a terminal window on your DreamHost server.
```
ssh <user>@web2py.guaminsects.net
```
Create a virtual python environment in ~/python (could go elsewhere, but remember the path):
```
cd ~
virtualenv python
```

Clone sources from the Web2Py github site into a top level directory called web2py:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/web2py/web2py.git
cp -a web2py/. web2py.guaminsects.net/

Copy handlers/wsgihandler.py to passenger_wsgi.py:

cd web2py.guaminsects.net
cp handlers/wsgihandler.py passenger_wsgi.py

Edit passenger_wsgi.py. Insert these two lines at immediately before the line "if not os.path.isdir('applications'):". Note that the INTERP path points to the virtualenv created earlier:
```
INTERP = os.path.join(os.environ['HOME'], 'python', 'bin', 'python')
if sys.executable != INTERP: os.execl(INTERP, INTERP, *sys.argv)
```
Create tmp/restart.txt. Touch this file to force relaunch of Web2Py via Passenger:
```
mkdir tmp
touch tmp/restart.txt
```
Set an admin password. This command will give errors (for among other reasons, a user process cannot listen on port 443), but it will have generated the necessary parameters_443.py file.
```
python web2py.py -p 443 -a "secret-secure-password"
```
The Web2Py environment should now be operational. Visit https://web2py.guaminsects.net to see it.
Clean up. Delete the top level directory where the web2py git repository was downloaded:
```
cd ~
rm -rf web2py
```