Chatteren

Here are the solutions to a few annoying things that caused issues when I was installing Python, Django, and MySQL on a new Windows 7 64-bit laptop.

1. Be sure to set your PYTHONPATH variable.

After I installed ActiveState Python, it didn't set up the environmental variable. I added it and restarted the command window, and voilà. (I don't remember having to set that up manually on my XP machine, but I could be mistaken since it's been a very long time since I installed everything on that machine. Regardless, it's a good thing to check. *g* Also check your PATH variable, to make sure that Python, Django, and MySQL are all in there.)

2. Assign the read_default_file setting in the database dictionary.

I was getting "Error 2003: Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)." It wasn't the firewall blocking the port, because mysql is running on a socket. (Though I could be wrong, as I just switched over to Codomo from ZoneAlarm, which had issues with Win7 64-bit and Filezilla, and I haven't learned all of Codomo's quirks yet, so who knows?) Even though I've got the admin service set up to execute "C:\progs\mysql\bin\mysqld" --defaults-file="C:\progs\mysql\my.ini" MySQL, it still wasn't finding the ini file for some reason. Weirdly, telling Django which my.ini file to run MySQL with fixed it. In your settings.py, in the database section, you'll add the OPTIONS entry:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'NAME': 'database_name',                      
        'USER': 'username',
        'PASSWORD': 'password',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': '',
        'OPTIONS': {
            'read_default_file': 'c:\path\to\your\my.ini',
        },
    }
}