Upgrading Ubuntu for Django Users

I just updated my Slice from Ubuntu Dapper (6.06.1), the currently available version from Slicehost, to Ubuntu Feisty (7.04).

I followed mhertel’s instructions to upgrade the system (must be run as root):

sed -e 's/\dapper/ edgy/g' -i /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a
reboot

sed -e 's/\edgy/ feisty/g' -i /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a
reboot

And of course, going from Edgy to Feisty reports:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  apache2-common libapache2-mod-python libapache2-mod-python2.4 
  libvolumeid0 php5-mysqli python-mysqldb sysvinit

That list might be slightly different for you, but the important bits are mod_python and python-mysqldb which will be removed and not replaced. No big deal, just install them like so:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-python python-mysqldb

Upgrading will also give you Python 2.5 which means your site-packages directory has changed from /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ to /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/. Re-create your django and project symlinks like so:

sudo ln -s /path/to/django_src/django /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django
sudo ln -s /path/to/myproject /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/myproject

You may have to remove all old .pyc files as well.