And CherryPy Looks to be the Winner

So I've been looking for a pure Python lightweight HTTP server for serving up a small django app.

Here are the steps I used (assuming Django is already installed however you installed it) for Ubuntu Hardy LTS:

1) Install CherryPy 3.x (I installed the python-cherrypy3 package)

2) Get DjangoCerise and follow the docs. Documentation and these wrapper scripts were the make or break difference.

3) Increase number of threads in th e SERVER_THREADS file. My crude app worked fine but the django admin interface was a bit sluggish.

While it properly daemonizes (possibly because I screwed up the scripts) shutdown wasn't working for me and (quite obviously, in hindsight) unless you run the startup scripts as root (which I will be) once this app qoes into "production" it won't properly set the user to nobody.