Django Import errors on production environment - django

Question

i have a trouble with run django project on production server with Apache and mod_wsgi. This Error happened when i'm start apache and go to site first time or go from other:
ImportError at /
Exception Value: cannot import name MyName
Exception Location /var/www/projectname/appname/somemodule.py
When i'm reload page the error disappears and site work fine. Another point is that this error happened selectively and sometime not appear.
In project i'm use imports without project name prefix (i mean 'from accounts.models import Account' instead 'from projectname.accounts.models import Account').
On development (manage.py runserver) server all work fine without any troubles.
I have used many variations of my apache and wsgi script configurations but problem is not solved.
Here my current projectname.wsgi:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os, sys, re
sys.path.append('/var/www/projectname')
sys.path.append('/var/www')
os.environ['PYTHON_EGG_CACHE'] = '/var/www/projectname/.python-egg'
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings'
import django.core.handlers.wsgi
application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()
Here is some parts from apache config:
<VirtualHost ip:80>
ServerAdmin admin#server.com
DocumentRoot /var/www
ServerName www.projectname.com
WSGIScriptAlias / "/var/www/projectname/projectname.wsgi"
WSGIDaemonProcess projectname threads=5 maximum-requests=5000
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
....
Also i'm use a separate Virtual Host for SSL.
I hope somebody help me.
Thanks!

Answer 1

When I had this problem, this post https://stackoverflow.com/a/10601523/1782780 pointed me towards the answer: I had a bug in a module further up the chain.
As Michal explains in that post:
Python does not just select that one class from the administrative/models.py file. Instead the Python interpreter reads the entire file, creates the module object, executes the code from the imported file in the new modules namespace, and then copies the name Contract from the new module's namespace to the current namespace. So, although it seems that you are importing just one class from a module, an error anywhere in that module can prevent a successful import - in your case it is an error with class ContractForm. The rest of the traceback details what exactly went wrong with that class.
So look further back in your traceback and you might find your problem.

Answer 2

I add a similar problem and the cause was that the 'current directory' was 'www' and not root project dir.

Answer 3

In the django development server the server environment is set according to the current project you are working. Thats why the import errors occur while shifting to Apache.
While using import use " from projectname.appname.models import MyModel ". Be as specefic as you can.
Use sys.path.append('location/to/your_project_foler/') in your case "/var/www"
Just a suggestion:
Also try to set-up django in another url than root. I also had a similar problem while trying to run django on the site root, i.e. :
WSGIScriptAlias /< some url > "/var/www/projectname/projectname.wsgi"

Answer 4

In my case it was a leftover directory from the past (filled with only the pyc compiled files which possibly caused the directory to stuck without deletion) which matched a new python file's name.
In the past a directory tasks was created in a module acme. Within that directory there was the __init__.py and four other python files.
The uwsgi service compiled the the pyc file for each of those python files once a request touched them.
Much later the files in that directory and the directory was removed from the Git source.
However because the .pyc files were in place the directory actually stayed on the server. (The git pull is incremental, we don't pull a complete source from ground zero).
Even more later (recently, now) I committed a tasks.py to that folder where there's this leftover tasks directory.
That made the uwsgi engine not being able to import anything from that file without any detailed reason.
The struggle to realize this took me more than half of my work day.