i am running Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS and it came pre-packed with python2.6 but i need to replace it with python2.7.2.

(The reason is simple, 2.7 has a lot of features backported from 3 )

i had installed python2.7.2 using

./configure
make
make altinstall

the altinstall option installed it, without touching the system default version, to /usr/local/lib/python2.7 and placed the interpreter in /usr/local/bin/python2.7

Then to help mod_wsgi find python2.7 i added the following to /etc/apache2/sites-available/wsgisite

WSGIPythonHome /usr/local

i start apache and run a test wsgi app BUT i am greeted by python 2.6.5 and not Python2.7

Later i replaced the default python simlink to point to python 2.7

ln -f /usr/local/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python

Now typing 'python' on the console opens python2.7 but somehow mod_wsgi still picks up python2.6

Next i tried,

PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
export PATH

then do a quick restart apache, but yet again its python2.6 !!

Here is my $PATH

/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

contents of /etc/apache2/sites-available/wsgisite

WSGIPythonHome /usr/local


<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName wsgitest.local
    DocumentRoot /home/wwwhost/pydocs/wsgi
    <Directory /home/wwwhost/pydocs/wsgi>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

    WSGIScriptAlias / /home/wwwhost/pydocs/wsgi/app.wsgi

</VirtualHost>

app.wsgi

import sys

def application(environ, start_response):
    status = '200 OK'
    output = sys.version

    response_headers = [('Content-type', 'text/plain'),
                        ('Content-Length', str(len(output)))]
    start_response(status, response_headers)

    return [output]

Apache error.log

'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:21 2011] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=23235): Initializing Python.
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:21 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) mod_wsgi/2.8 Python/2.6.5 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:21 2011] [info] Server built: Nov 18 2010 21:20:56
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:21 2011] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=23238): Attach interpreter ''.
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:21 2011] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=23239): Attach interpreter ''.
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:31 2011] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=23238): Create interpreter 'wsgitest.local|'.
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:31 2011] [info] [client 192.168.1.205] mod_wsgi (pid=23238, process='', application='wsgitest.local|'): Loading WSGI script '/home/wwwhost/pydocs/$
[Sun Jun 19 00:27:50 2011] [info] mod_wsgi (pid=23239): Create interpreter 'wsgitest.local|'.

Has anybody ever managed to make mod_wsgi run on a non-system default version of python ?