Running Python from CDROM or USB using Stunnix Advanced Web Server

Stunnix Advanced Web Server allows the running of python-based (and mod_python based) sites off cdrom, DVD or USB on Windows, MacOS X (v10.3 and above, PPC and Intel) and Linux. Python sites will run the same way off CD or DVD on any of these platforms. No installation of Python on the user's computer is needed - the python interpreter and all modules run directly off CDROM or USB.

Also mod_wsgi is supported on all platforms for running mod_wsgi-based sites. Please note that you can't have mod_python and mod_wsgi support present at the same time - you have to select either of them.

The Python interpreters that ship with SAWS for all supported OSes already have support for MySQL and SQLite. This means one can access MySQL and SQLite databases running off CDROM from Python scripts. A SAWS demo CD contains sample python scripts that access MySQL and SQLite running off CD.

All Python scripts that run off CDROM are executed under mod_python. This means the Python interpreter is already present inside the Web Server process, so no time is spent starting python interpreter. If one needs to execute python scripts written in accordance with CGI, one can configure mod_python to handle those particular python scripts as CGI scripts.

There are different Python implementations available on our site. Files allowing the building of your own python modules that use native code are also included with each Python package.

The recommended location for cross-platform Python modules on CDROM is /extensions/engines-noarch-custom/python (for custom extensions that are not available publicly or for modified versions of extensions available publicly ) and /extensions/engines-noarch-standard/python (for vanilla versions of publicly available extensions). Placing non-standard cross-platform extensions to these directories will save space on the media off which SAWS runs.

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