mod_wsgi "Call to 'site.addsitedir()' failed" on AWS Elastic Beanstalk Python 3.6 platform

I encountered the same problem today ("64bit Amazon Linux 2017.09 v2.6.0 running Python 3.6", mod_wsgi errors).

I have a workaround, though I'm not sure it is a proper or the most direct solution.

In short

Install the latest mod_wsgi.

Longer explanation...

Check it works manually

First I did the following manually to check it works, then I scripted it so it wouldn't be destroyed on a later deploy.

Installing mod_wsgi will need apxs, so go to the instance and find packages:

eb ssh
yum provides apxs

In my case there were 3. The oldest worked on the ssh console, so I added to .ebextensions/01_packages.config:

packages:
  yum:
    ...
    httpd24-devel-2.4.27-3.75.amzn1.x86_64: []

Then in ssh I followed this sequence to test the manually built version od mod_wsgi (I couldn't get any yum package to work - though it can probably be done).

sudo -s  # become root
cd /tmp
wget -q "https://github.com/GrahamDumpleton/mod_wsgi/archive/4.4.21.tar.gz"
tar -xzf '4.4.21.tar.gz'
cd ./mod_wsgi-4.4.21
./configure --with-python=/usr/bin/python3.6
make
make install

Assuming all is good so far, restart Apache:

service httpd restart

Then look in var/log/httpd/error_log and hopefully you'll see:

... [pid 2088] AH00163: Apache/2.4.27 (Amazon) mod_wsgi/4.4.21 Python/3.6.2 configured -- resuming normal operations

I reloaded the Python app page and it's working (well it had a different error but mod_wsgi is working).

Now to make this part of the deployment.

Scripting

After a few iterations, I settled on this in the .ebextensions/... file:

packages:
  yum:
    git: []
    gcc-c++: []
    httpd24-devel-2.4.27-3.75.amzn1.x86_64: []

files:
  "/tmp/update-wsgi.sh" :
    mode: "000755"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      # update mod_wsgi
      cd /tmp
      wget -q "https://github.com/GrahamDumpleton/mod_wsgi/archive/4.4.21.tar.gz" && \
      tar -xzf '4.4.21.tar.gz' && \
      cd ./mod_wsgi-4.4.21 && \
      sudo ./configure --with-python=/usr/bin/python3.6 && \
      sudo make && \
      sudo make install && \
      sudo service httpd restart

commands:
  mod_wsgi_update:
    command: /tmp/update-wsgi.sh
    cwd: /tmp

Some notes:

• the gcc dependency is needed for mod_wsgi to build
• the httpd24-devel dependency is for the apsx tool