Django Shell No module named settings

Question

I\'ve deployed Django to Apache via mod_wsgi. Django is running fine when hosted from Apache. However, I\'m trying to do some maintenance via manage.py

Answer 1

I had a similar problem, where the same error was being returned when I tried to run django-admin.py startproject myapp. A previous answer here helped me figure it out. The problem was that I had previously pointed DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to a certain file, which I had later deleted. To fix it, I just removed the pointer with this command:

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=

Answer 2

If you are using wsgi/uwsgi in production...

I was having the same error:

If you renamed the folder that django startproject created that has setting.py files and wsgi.py , check in the wsgi.py file the line: os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "<your_folder_name>.settings")

In my case i had to rename < your_folder_name> also.

Answer 3

This can happen if your root directory name is the same as the name of one of your apps. For example here I have a directory called bar containing a Django project with an app also called bar:

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp
$ cd bar

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp/bar
$ ./manage.py shell
Error: Could not import settings 'bar.settings' (Is it on sys.path?): No module named settings

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp/bar
$ ls -l
total 48
-rw-r--r--  1 simon  staff     0 25 Oct 10:46 __init__.py
-rw-r--r--  1 simon  staff   130 25 Oct 10:46 __init__.pyc
drwxr-xr-x  7 simon  staff   238 25 Oct 10:46 bar
-rwxr-xr-x  1 simon  staff   503 25 Oct 10:46 manage.py
-rw-r--r--  1 simon  staff  5025 25 Oct 10:46 settings.py
-rw-r--r--  1 simon  staff  2658 25 Oct 10:46 settings.pyc
-rw-r--r--  1 simon  staff   556 25 Oct 10:46 urls.py

Changing the root directory's name to foo (or anything else other than bar) solves the problem:

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp/bar
$ cd ..

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp
$ mv bar foo

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp
$ cd foo

Simons-MacBook-Pro ~/temp/foo
$ ./manage.py shell
Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Jun 16 2011, 16:59:05) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2335.15.00)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
(InteractiveConsole)
>>> 

Answer 4

It seems the path to your project isn't being recognized by wsgi. This has happened to me, and to solve it I added this to the top of my .wsgi file:

import os
import sys

root_path = os.path.abspath(os.path.split(__file__)[0])
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(root_path, 'project_name'))
sys.path.insert(0, root_path)

Answer 5

Somehow, if your project folder is the same name as the app that has the settings file in it, and if you have __init__.py in the project root folder, it will mess wsgi. I really dont understand why but removing this file solved this for me.

Answer 6

In my case the wsgi.py file was working when the system was running normally, but I was getting the ImportError when trying to do a manual manage.py command like migrate or collectstatic.

I checked wsgi.py for the way it imports the settings and noticed that it first adds the settings path to the sys.path as follows:

import sys
sys.path.append('/opt/server/settings')

I added that to the top of the manage.py and it works.