Django + Apache Internal Server Error: Permission denied - django

Question

I am using Django 1.6 and Apache for my website, at first the server worked well, I could successfully go to my web pages, but just after I run:
git reset --hard HEAD^
in my /var/www/html/mysite repository, it showed Internal Server Error in the browser and I got this in the error log:
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=15479): Create interpreter 'www.XXX.XXX|'.
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=15479): Adding '/var/www/html/mysite' to path.
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=15479): Adding '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages' to path.
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] mod_wsgi (pid=15479): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/var/www/html/mysite/mysite/wsgi.py'.
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py", line 187, in __call__
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] self.load_middleware()
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 44, in load_middleware
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] for middleware_path in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES:
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 54, in __getattr__
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] self._setup(name)
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 50, in _setup
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] self._configure_logging()
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py", line 80, in _configure_logging
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] logging_config_func(self.LOGGING)
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/logging/config.py", line 794, in dictConfig
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] dictConfigClass(config).configure()
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/logging/config.py", line 576, in configure
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] '%r: %s' % (name, e))
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] ValueError: Unable to configure handler 'file': [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/debug.log'
I saw it was "Permission denied", so I've run:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data mysite
And also:
sudo chmod -R 755 mysite
But it is still not working, I even changed the persmission to 777 for the whole html directory but it was no use.
I don't understand why there came out an permission error, is there anything related to the git command that I run?
PS : I didn't mentioned at all the /debug.log in my settings.py, I wrote:
LOGGING = {
'version': 1,
'disable_existing_loggers': True,
'handlers': {
'file': {
'level': 'DEBUG',
'class': 'logging.FileHandler',
'filename': 'debug.log',
},
},
'loggers': {
'django.request': {
'handlers': ['file'],
'level': 'DEBUG',
'propagate': True,
},
},
}

Answer 1

The problem is in your settings.py in the file, in the section that controls logging.
[Thu Jun 09 16:28:32 2016] [error] [client 10.192.76.11] ValueError: Unable to configure handler 'file': [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/debug.log'
While you can certainly write to /debug.log with proper permissions, it's an unlikely location. Please choose a more appropriate one. You can do that by changing this line:
'filename': 'debug.log',
in your logging setup. Be sure to give a full path eg /tmp/debug.log or /var/log/httpd/debug.log
If you really want to write to that file do
sudo touch /debug.log
sudo chown www-data:www-data /debug.log
and reload mod wsgi