ssh connection on apache server python mod_wsgi flask

Question

I have a python rest API with Flask launched in an Apache server with mod_wsgi. It opens some ssh connections with other machines to send some info and work with it in there, and before I changed my server ( I had it running on a Werkzeug server) it was working all fine. But now it seems it works but when I do a get request to my server, it freezes and does nothing, no log, no error, nothing.

init .py

from flask import Flask, jsonify,make_response,abort,g,request,url_for
from flask_httpauth import HTTPBasicAuth
from flask_sqlalchemy import SQLAlchemy
from flask_bson import accept_bson, bsonify
import base64
from controler import Controler
...
...
@app.route('/api/register', methods=['POST'])
def new_user():

    try:
        username = request.json.get('username')
        password = request.json.get('password')
    except:
        abort(400)


    user = users.new_user(username,password)
    return (jsonify({'username': user.username,'uri':url_for('get_user', username=user.username, _external=True)}), 201)
...
...

Controler.py

class Controler():   
ips = 2 #number of machines in the distributed service
    def _init_(self):

    self.con = []#ssh conn
    self.data = []#conn metadata
    self.__initConn()

def __initConn(self):

    i = 0
    config = SSHConfig()
    config.parse(open('./config'))

    for j in range(self.ips):
        i += 1
        o = config.lookup('server' + str(i)) 
        params = dict (
            ssh_address=o['ip'],
            ssh_port=22,
            ssh_host_key=None,
            ssh_username=o['user'],
            ssh_password=o['password'],
            ssh_private_key=None,
            remote_bind_address=('127.0.0.1', 5555),
        )
        a = open_tunnel(**params)
        a.start()#starting tunnel. *************************

It stops in the last line, when it should start the ssh tunnel.

Some info: Apache version 2.4 Python version 2.7

Launched on Ubuntu VM and child nodes on Ubuntu server

Answer 1

Under Apache your code isn't going to run as you, but as Apache user. If you are relying on SSH configuration/keys in your user home account, then it isn't going to work.

That relative path of ./config also isn't going to work as the current working directory of the processes running your application using mod_wsgi is not going to be where your code is. Try calculating the location of the config file as an absolute path.