Run custom Django management command over SSH

Question

I have a Django application with a custom management command in one of the apps. If I log in over SSH I can run it without any problems with

python manage.py sitedir/mycommand

However, if I try to run the command as a oneliner from my local box like this:

ssh myserver python manage.py sitedir/mycommand

I get an ImportError like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "mysite/manage.py", line 11, in <module>
    execute_manager(settings)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 438, in execute_manager
    utility.execute()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 379, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 261, in fetch_command
    klass = load_command_class(app_name, subcommand)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 67, in load_command_class
    module = import_module('%s.management.commands.%s' % (app_name, name))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/utils/importlib.py", line 35, in import_module
    __import__(name)
ImportError: No module named mysite.myapp.management.commands.mycommand

The real reason is that I want to run this admin command from a Fabric script but until I can get it to run via the ssh one-liner I guess it will be impossible. Is there something in the environment that differs when you run it via the ssh one-liner? The python path seems correct in both cases.

Answer 1

I think I have a clue what is going on. I don't know how to fix it yet.

To reproduce your scenario I wrote a small script.

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, django
print django.VERSION

After which I executed it after logging in through SSH as well as remotely (ssh yourserver.com "python /home/me/script.py") and everything went fine.

Then I changed the script.

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
print os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE']

This version worked when I logged in to the server but failed when I tried to execute it remotely.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/me/script.py", line 3, in <module>
    print os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE']
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/UserDict.py", line 22, in __getitem__
    raise KeyError(key)
KeyError: 'DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'

Apparently the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable is not set when you execute the command remotely over SSH. I suspect this may be what is going wrong in your case. You will need to figure out how to make sure that this variable is properly set before executing the script.

Perhaps you can explicitly set it: os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'foo'..

Try this:

ssh yourserver.com "python /home/me/script.py" -t 
    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=app.settings.custom

Answer 2

You may try mysite path to sys.path in manage.py? It could help - as I can see now python does not see mysite directory.

import sys
sys.path.append('mysite_directory')