Deploying a Geodjango Application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk - django

Question

I'm trying to deploy a geodjango application on AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The configuration is 64bit Amazon Linux 2017.09 v2.6.6 running Python 3.6. I am getting this error when trying to deploy:
Requires: libpoppler.so.5()(64bit) Error: Package: gdal-java-1.9.2-8.rhel6.x86_64 (pgdg93) Requires: libpoppler.so.5()(64bit)
How do I install the required package? I read through Setting up Django with GeoDjango Support in AWS Beanstalk or EC2 Instance but I am still getting problems. My ebextensions currently looks like:
commands:
01_yum_update:
command: sudo yum -y update
02_epel_repo:
command: sudo yum-config-manager -y --enable epel
03_install_gdal_packages:
command: sudo yum -y install gdal gdal-devel
packages:
yum:
git: []
postgresql95-devel: []
gettext: []
libjpeg-turbo-devel: []
libffi-devel: []

Answer 1

I'm going to answer my own question for the sake my future projects and anyone else trying to get started with geodjango. Updating this answer as of July 2020
Create an ebextensions file to install GDAL on the EC2 instance at deployment:
01_gdal.config
commands:
01_install_gdal:
test: "[ ! -d /usr/local/gdal ]"
command: "/tmp/gdal_install.sh"
files:
"/tmp/gdal_install.sh":
mode: "000755"
owner: root
group: root
content: |
#!/usr/bin/env bash
sudo yum-config-manager --enable epel
sudo yum -y install make automake gcc gcc-c++ libcurl-devel proj-devel geos-devel
# Geos
cd /
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/geos
cd usr/local/geos/geos-3.7.2
sudo wget geos-3.7.2.tar.bz2 http://download.osgeo.org/geos/geos-3.7.2.tar.bz2
sudo tar -xvf geos-3.7.2.tar.bz2
cd geos-3.7.2
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
# Proj4
cd /
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/proj
cd usr/local/proj
sudo wget -O proj-5.2.0.tar.gz http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-5.2.0.tar.gz
sudo wget -O proj-datumgrid-1.8.tar.gz http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-datumgrid-1.8.tar.gz
sudo tar xvf proj-5.2.0.tar.gz
sudo tar xvf proj-datumgrid-1.8.tar.gz
cd proj-5.2.0
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
# GDAL
cd /
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/gdal
cd usr/local/gdal
sudo wget -O gdal-2.4.4.tar.gz http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/2.4.4/gdal-2.4.4.tar.gz
sudo tar xvf gdal-2.4.4.tar.gz
cd gdal-2.4.4
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
As shown, the script checks whether gdal already exists using the test function. It then downloads the Geos, Proj, and GDAL libraries and installs them in the usr/local directory. At the time of writing this, geodjango (Django 3.0) supports up to Geos 3.7, Proj 5.2 (which also requires projdatum. Current releases do not require it), and GDAL 2.4 Warning: this installation process can take a long time. Also I am not a Linux professional so some of those commands may be redundant, but it works.
Lastly I add the following two environment variables to my Elastic Beanstalk configuration:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PROJ_LIB: usr/local/proj
If you still have troubles I recommend checking the logs and ssh-ing in the EC2 instance to check that installation took place. Original credit to this post