Setting GoDaddy hosted site to use Python3/Flask

I planned to actually use my hosted site of fadshop.net in GoDaddy, so last time I explored using C# in Windows hosted site (Using Visual Studio to build a website, and publish it in the GoDaddy hosting site). 

Yes, it was working, but my patience in Windows is thin. Now I switched the site back to Linux.

Again, the software in the GoDaddy hosted server is outdated. Last time, in the Microsoft hosted site, the server only has ASP.NET, doesn't have ASP.NET Core which was published since 2016. Now, the python version is 2.6.6, which was released in 2010. 

So the first thing I did was to find a way to run Python 3 for my website that I planned to build.

After reading dozens of pages about this topic, I found the method was to compile and install python3 under your own folder as non-root user. At first I thought that was a hack, until I found a blog page of GoDaddy:  How to install and configure Python on a hosted server , using the same method, then I was sure that is the right/correct/plausible way of getting things done.

My main reference pages are:

https://towardsdatascience.com/installing-python-3-and-flask-on-godaddy-1635fe6f24bc

https://www.godaddy.com/garage/how-to-install-and-configure-python-on-a-hosted-server/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/c5wxh0/help_with_error_on_install_of_python37_from/

All these pages ( and other Googled pages) gave similar solutions but all of them failed during my practice. So I have to consult dozens of other pages (including C compiler parameter setting information)  and add my knowledge into this practice to make it work. Hopefully this is also helpful for you.

First of all, this is a clean GoDaddy hosted "Economy Linux Hosting with cPanel". I think it is CentOS 6 or 7. You can either turn on "SSH access" in your hosting server page, or get to the Terminal in the cPanel.

I have been using Linux for a long time, and usually I am the root/admin of the server, and the software can be easily installed using yum or apt-get. Now with a non-root account, things are very different. The idea is to install all software/library into one folder under this non-root account. In here I am using  "~/.python/" folder,  and it is also /home/zwsjyo79b9/.python, $HOME/.python in the following scripts:

Step 1, set path, library path environment variables:

 

export PATH=$PATH:~/.python/bin

export LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:~/.python/lib:~/.python/lib64

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/.python/lib:~/.python/lib64

export C_INCLUDE_PATH=$C_INCLUDE_PATH:~/.python/include

export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=$CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH:~/.python/include

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=~/.python/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH

export LD_RUN_PATH=~/.python/lib:~/.python/lib64

You can put this into your ~/.bash_profile for future use. The lib64 in this page is my invention and the key difference between this post and other people's pages. Some of the software created library files in this folder. It might be a new thing, so the other pages didn't mention it, but without it, the python compilation will fail miserably.

Step 2, before compiling python3, we need to have 3 things ready:

1. openssl package. Without it, the pip of the new python3 will not work. You will get this message when running pip:

pip is configured with locations that require TLS/SSL, however the ssl module in Python is not available.

A python without pip is useless. I blame python for letting itself compiled at all without openssl. It wasted me a lot of time on that.

2, libffi. Without it, the python package will failed with this message when installing some package like jasonpickle or some other normal operation:

ImportError: No module named '_ctypes'

Again, I blame python for letting itself compiled without this package.

3, sqlite. I will use sqlite in my python program, and I can't just do "pip install pysqlite" at that time. Although this GoDaddy server already has sqlite running, it is required to compile and install it (with libraries) for the compilation of python3 to include sqlite module.

So now I create one folder ~/tobeinstall/ , and google for these 3 packages (openssl, libffi, sqlite) and downloaded their source code packages. At the time of this post, they are retrieved by:

wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1g.tar.gz

wget https://github.com/libffi/libffi/releases/download/v3.3/libffi-3.3.tar.gz

wget https://www.sqlite.org/2020/sqlite-autoconf-3330000.tar.gz

then "tar xzvf xxxx" to unzip them into corresponding folders.

Execute these commands to compile and install them:

cd openssl

CFLAGS=-I/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/include LDFLAGS=-L/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/lib ./config --prefix=$HOME/.python

make

make install

cd ../libffi

CFLAGS=-I/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/include LDFLAGS=-L/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/lib ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.python

make

make install

cd ../sqlite3

CFLAGS=-I/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/include LDFLAGS=-L/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/lib ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.python

make

make install

The idea is to use --prefix=$HOME/.python to specify the installation folder. 

Note: The libffi will install some library files in the ~/.python/lib64 folder. This is not mentioned in other discussions about compiling python3.

Step 3, with all these packages installed, we can start getting python source code:

wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.5/Python-3.8.5.tgz

and untar it. Before compilation, we need to modify one file in the unzipped folder:

vi Modules/Setup

Uncomment the lines about SSL, and give the correct path to SSL

Now with this specific command, you can start building:

CFLAGS=-I/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/include LDFLAGS="-L/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/lib -L/home/zwsjyo79b9sc/.python/lib64" ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.python --enable-loadable-sqlite-extensions  --with-openssl=/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python 

The configuration process will take several minutes to complete. Make sure you see:

checking for openssl/ssl.h in /home/zwsjyo79b9/.python... yes

checking whether compiling and linking against OpenSSL works... yes

checking for X509_VERIFY_PARAM_set1_host in libssl... yes

That is the proof that the openssl is correctly installed, and that is the guarantee that pip will perform correctly.

Now it is time to compile it:

make

Check the output like this:

Make sure "sqlite" and "ctypes" are not in the "The necessary bits to build these optional modules were not found" group.

Now you can do "make install" to complete the installation. With the "export PATH=$PATH:~/.python/bin"  you put in the beginning of this tutorial, you should be able to execute "python3" now.

Now we get to the part to actually use it for your application. First of all, my suggestion is to use a subdomain to play with this, keep to main site as default. To do that, you need to create a subdomain in your cPanel. For example, when I create a "deepparser" subdomain, the system will automatically set the default file path as "/home/zwsjyo79b9/public_html/deepparser.fadshop.net".  The rest of this tutorial are mostly copied from the second part of  Installing Python 3 and Flask on GoDaddy with some modifications:

public_html/deepparser.fadshop.net/

├── .htaccess

└── cgi-bin/
├── app.cgi

├── app.py

├── templates/

│ └── home.html

└── venv/

Create a cgi-bin folder in this subdomain, then execute:

pip3 install virtualenv

virtualenv -p /home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/bin/python3 venv    # make sure the created virtual env is using the lately installed python3 environment

source venv/bin/activate

pip install Flask                    # if you have other package to install, now it is the good time

deactivate

Now create the cgi-bin/app.cgi file with this content:

#!/home/zwsjyo79b9/.python/bin/python3

import os

import sys

sys.path.insert(0,

                '/home/zwsjyo79b9/public_html/deepparser.fadshop.net/cgi-bin/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages')

from wsgiref.handlers import CGIHandler

from app import app

class ProxyFix(object):

    def __init__(self, app):

        self.app = app

    

    def __call__(self, environ, start_response):

        environ['SERVER_NAME'] = ""

        environ['SERVER_PORT'] = "80"

        environ['REQUEST_METHOD'] = "GET"

        environ['SCRIPT_NAME'] = ""

        environ['QUERY_STRING'] = ""

        environ['SERVER_PROTOCOL'] = "HTTP/1.1"

        return self.app(environ, start_response)

if __name__ == '__main__':

    app.wsgi_app = ProxyFix(app.wsgi_app)

    CGIHandler().run(app)

app.wsgi_app = ProxyFix(app.wsgi_app)

CGIHandler.run(app)

#Note: The origin page has error in the 5th line about sys.path.insert(). Information in this page is correct.

And create a simple Flask application in cgi-bin/app.py:

from flask import Flask, render_templateapp = Flask(__name__)@app.route('/')
def home():
    return render_template('home.html')

Now create a cgi-bin/templates/home.html  and type anything inside. We are just trying to prove the content in this file will be served when visitor visit the subdomain "http://deepparser.fadshop.net/"

Now comes to the last file, .htaccess in the subdomain folder. For example, in my server, this file is /home/zwsjyo79b9/public_html/deepparser.fadshop.net/.htaccess

The content:

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .py
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /home/USERNAME/public_html/python/cgi-bin/app.cgi/$1 [L]

Now we have all the files, but one more thing to do: Set all the files as 755, executable, but not writable for other users. 

chmod 755 *

This is required for the system to work.

If you have to understand the logic, at first the .htaccess in the main folder of the subdomain has a ReWriteRule to redirect all request (link) into the cgi-bin/app.cgi , then the app.cgi call the newly installed python3 with the library of the virtual environment (cgi-bin/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages) to handle the request, and pass the request to app.py, which is a standard Flask application.

Now the server (this subdomain) is ready. Fire up your browser to visit it: