Script timed out before returning headers: wsgi.py on elastic beanstalk

The fix for us was to add the WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL} setting as per Meistro's answer.

You'll want to ensure you edit your wsgi config by way of your .ebextensions/foobar.config file, so that the changes are permanent. See the .ebextensions config docs.

Add the following to your .ebextensions/foobar.config file:

files:
  "/etc/httpd/conf.d/wsgi_custom.conf":
    mode: "000644"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}

This will create (or overwrite) the contents of the /etc/httpd/conf.d/wsgi_custom.conf file with WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}

UPDATE 8 FEB 2017

Previously my wsgi.conf was only using one process:

WSGIDaemonProcess wsgi processes=1 threads=15 display-name=%{GROUP}

I upped the processes to something more reasonable and haven't had any issues:

WSGIDaemonProcess wsgi processes=6 threads=15 display-name=%{GROUP}

This change along with the original addition of WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL} seems to have done the trick.

UPDATE 17 September 2015

I'm still occasionally running in to this issue. Usually, redeploying via eb deploy fixes the issue. It's hard to say what the underlying issue is.

Original Answer

I eventually got the project working but then tried creating an image to use for new instances, which reopened the problem. I'm not sure why it worked then stopped working but I rebuilt my custom AMI from scratch and then repushed my project. Turns out it was an issue in wsgi.py. The version I posted was actually the different from what was being deployed. For some reason another developer had put this in wsgi.py:

path = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
if path not in sys.path:
sys.path.append(path)

I removed this and it fixed the problem.

My advice for anyone having

Script timed out before returning headers: wsgi.py

is to check you wsgi.py file.

It certainly does seem like an issue with WSGI and Apache like you mentioned. One thing to double check is the .ebextensions file in your source directory.

There should be a config in there that specifies the WSGI information like the location of the application. You might also want to check your Django settings and run it locally with an Apache setup using WSGI.

You've probably already read the official documentation for WSGI and Django, but this might catch some simplistic things that you might have missed: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/create_deploy_Python_django.html#create_deploy_Python_django_update