I found another thread which deals with this problem: http://forum.webfaction.com/viewtopic.php?id=2037

However, it's quite cumbersome and I'd really like WebFaction to install lxml globally so that we don't have to go through all this trouble to do something which should be so simple.

I did that and got no errors, but I still get the same error. It seems that I need to use a custom Python build with --enable-unicode=ucs2, which I have done, but I can't figure out how to make mod_python use that Python executable. The Django debug page always says that it's Python version 2.5.2!

So what is the right way to make mod_python use my own Python build?

Currently, there is no way to reproduce the UCS4 problem, because I've fiddled around with the configuration a lot since then.

I tried building my own Apache, according to the instructions, but got compiler errors:

http://pastebin.com/m403db860

skorpan wrote:

Since my last post I've been able to compile my custom Apache, Python 2.6.1 and mod_python 3.3.1. I'm currently writing a little HOWTO on this subject, as it's far from easy.

If that has solved your issue, then great

If possible, I'd still like to know how to reproduce your original error "Error was: /home/yohan/lib/python2.5/lxml/etree.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS4_FromEncodedObject".

For what it's worth, I noticed that when following the instructions I gave earlier for installing lxml, the path to etree.so is different, eg 'lib/python2.5/lxml-2.2-py2.5-linux-i686.egg/lxml/etree.so'. Since you said you had the same error after following my instructions, perhaps you needed to remove the original lxml library first.

The *best* way to serve static files is to create static-only applications in our control panel and map those apps to whatever URL paths on your website record. That way, your static files will be served by the front-end nginx server, which means less work (and less memory usage) for your private Apache instance

skorpan wrote:

Yep, that works. Is there any way to make the nginx server handle the static files without having to copy my media files from my directory to the other application's directory?

yes - use a 'symbolic link to static-only' application, with the full path to your static file directory in the 'extra info' field.

Hi, you can use this process for installing the bindings:

You can install libxml2 and the lxml python bindings into your home directory with the following commands. Hope this helps!

#################

mkdir -p $HOME/bin $HOME/src $HOME/lib $HOME/include $HOME/share
cd $HOME/src

mkdir -p $HOME/lib/$PYTHON $HOME/src/tmp
cat > $HOME/.pydistutils.cfg << EOF
[build_ext]
include_dirs=$HOME/include
library_dirs=$HOME/lib
EOF
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
export TEMP=$HOME/src/tmp
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export LD_INCLUDE_PATH=$HOME/include/:$HOME/include/libxml2:$HOME/include/libxml2/libxml
cd $HOME/src
wget ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/libxml2-2.7.7.tar.gz
tar -xzf libxml2-2.7.7.tar.gz
cd libxml2-2.7.7
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make && make install
cd $HOME/src
wget ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/libxslt-1.1.26.tar.gz
tar -xzf libxslt-1.1.26.tar.gz
cd libxslt-1.1.26
./configure --prefix=$HOME --with-libxml-prefix=$HOME
make && make install
easy_install-$PYTHONVER http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/l/lxml/lxml-2.2.6.tar.gz

rm -rf $HOME/src/libxml2-2.7.7
rm $HOME/src/libxml2-2.7.7.tar.gz
rm -rf $HOME/src/libxslt-1.1.26
rm $HOME/src/libxslt-1.1.26.tar.gz
rmdir $HOME/src/tmp

What more info do you want about the "symbolic link to static-only" application?