Django projects at a glance

I have decided to write this after experiencing an extreme amount of frustration at the Django web application framework for Python. Some things are simply not clearly spelled out in the docs.

Django project structure: When possible, make any model a separate app

Any Django project should be a collection of apps. Now, if you're a normal human, you may think of "Chrome" as an app, and maybe "iTunes" and "Microsoft Word" and things like that. However, in Django, app is something on a much smaller scale. If you have blog posts and comments, that's a whole app. That app is separate from a blog authors app. Essentially, you want to break a single web project into as many small apps as you can, even if the apps that make up your site are co-dependent and not usable on their own.

One of the largest benefits to splitting your project into as many apps as possible is it keeps the models.py files a sane size. There is simply no straightforward, supported way to break up models.py. I tried to create a models/ directory with an __init__.py that had `from x import *` for each model module x in my project. This unfortunately lead to my Django fixtures breaking, and as a consequence, half of my tests failing.

Templates and static files go in the app directory

This will help keep all your static files logically separated. Single-use Javascript widgets will get to go in the folder closer to their actual use, while broadly used files go into a central location.

Given your Django app is called 'app': Templates go into app/templates/app. Static files go into app/static/app. The reason you make a new app folder in templates/ and static/ is that Django doesn't split up different app files into different namespaces in any way. Maybe (hopefully) this will be added in a future version of Django, but for now, you must create a root folder for you static files and templates to prevent filename collision with other apps.

As for those global-use files: an ideal central location is not yet known to me. I am still in the process of restructuring my Django project. However, I have a hunch that I'd put project-global files in the the static/ and templates/ directory in the main app (the app with settings.py). I have not yet attempted yet.

More details

For more detail, go to this StackOverflow question. I stumbled upon it just now when trying to figure out

Installing openSUSE 12.1 KDE version with a GeForce GTX 580

For my first post on my mostly directionless blog, I will write something which may be helpful to other people! Sweet!

Some Backstory and Context

If you want, skip this entire part for a tl;dr summary at the bottom

I randomly decided to switch from Windows 7 to Linux for my home desktop after having a mostly positive experience with it at work, and being a fan of the color green, lizards, and KDE, I decided to give openSUSE a shot. The version I downloaded (the latest at the time) was openSUSE 12.1 64-bit KDE version.

The system failed to boot, freezing up at the green openSUSE splash screen. I mashed Ctrl+Alt+Fn (where n is 1 through 7) to try and see any information and found some seemingly random error messages. Mine were "Checking Hybrid disk device(s)...not found" and "Couldn't find Live image configuration file". After these two it said "rebootException: reboot in 120 sec..." although it didn't actually reboot in 120 seconds as it indicated.

I then tried Knoppix, Fedora 17, and Kubuntu, all of which gave me various errors. Fedora's were the most baffling: "Started NFS file locking service. [OK] Started Sendmail Mail Transport Agent [OK] Started Sendmail Mail Transport Client [OK]." And then a freeze. On another tty (using the Ctrl+Alt+F-key trick again) I saw "FAT-fs (sdb1): bogus number of reserved sectors" and all sorts of other scary stuff. Or Fedora would boot and freeze after login. Either way, it was a pretty stellar time.

After many agonizing hours I eventually learned the real culprit was actually my video card the whole time. Apparently the current state of affairs is most distributions come with an open-source nVidia driver called Nouveau, and this Nouveau driver for some reason or another is causing all these distros to freeze at some point in the boot process. The solution is to pass "nouveau.accel=0" as an option to the Linux kernel before it boots. Most live CDs allow you to set boot options in a menu, and most distros install Grub which will also let you set boot options.

What I Ended Up Doing (the tl;dr summary)

• As mentioned above, prevent the boot errors by using nouveau.accel=0 as a boot option.
• I personally used this boot option workaround to boot into openSUSE's Live CD to install, and then again to boot openSUSE a few times as I figured out the rest.
• Assuming you're on openSUSE, use YaST to install the proprietary nVidia drivers, which tend to work well. Detailed instructions for 64 bit computers can be found here: http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html#2

If you're not using a 64 bit version, just scroll around on that page; it lists directions for other architectures as well.

That is essentially the end of the post, but as an addendum, I just want to say that I think it's quite odd that so many distros seem to all be affected by this bug, and for me it wasn't a showstopper but for someone less technical it is a complete nightmare. The combination of A: the buggy driver being widespread and B: the boot process for the various distros not doing decent error recovery or even displaying helpful error information runs contrary to my usual experience with Linux systems, where they fail loudly and are generally compatible with tons of hardware out-of-the-box.

Hopefully this gets addressed! Until then I hope this guide helps other people in my situation. It should also be noted that this bug apparently effects other GeForce 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx, 6xx etc. video cards.