Deploy django on Debian with gunicorn using upstart

In my experience gunicorn is more stable and uses less memory than uwsgi to handle the same number of requests. It is also much simpler to configure and deploy.

The only issue with it is that finding good straightforward tutorial on its deployment hasn't been easy for me. The problem araise not by gunicorn but the rather convulted method of supervisor which adds more complexity to the process.

Fortunately there is the much simpler way to keep gunicorn running:‌ upstart

First you need to install pip and virtaulenv:

apt-get install python-pip

pip install virtualenv

Switch to a non-root user and create a virtualenv

su myuser 

virtualenv ~/.myenv

virtualenv ~/.myenv

activate the virtaualenv

source ~/.myenv/bin/activate

Install gunicorn while you'r on your virtualenv:

(.myenv)# pip install gunicorn

create a gunicorn.sh in  /path/to/project, like this:

#!/bin/bash

NAME="myproject"                                  # Name of the application

DJANGODIR=/path/to/project             # Django project directory

SOCKFILE=/tmp/gunicorn.sock  # we will communicte using this unix socket

USER=john                                        # the user to run as

GROUP=www-data                                     # the group to run

NUM_WORKERS=9                                     # twice the number of cpu cores

DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=sai.settings             # which settings file should Django use

DJANGO_WSGI_MODULE=sai.wsgi                     # WSGI module name

echo "Starting $NAME as `whoami`"

# Activate the virtual environment

cd $DJANGODIR

source /home/user/.virtualenv/bin/activate

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=$DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE

export PYTHONPATH=$DJANGODIR:$PYTHONPATH

# Create the run directory if it doesn't exist

RUNDIR=$(dirname $SOCKFILE)

test -d $RUNDIR || mkdir -p $RUNDIR

# Start your Django Unicorn

# Programs meant to be run under supervisor should not daemonize themselves (do not use --daemon)

exec /home/john/.virtualenv/bin/gunicorn ${DJANGO_WSGI_MODULE}:application \

  --name $NAME \

  --workers $NUM_WORKERS \

  --user=$USER --group=$GROUP \

  --bind=unix:$SOCKFILE \

  --log-level=debug \

  --log-file=-

Note: DO NOT create /tmp/gunicorn.sock  
gunicorn will do that for you


Make sure that upstart is installed:

apt-get install upstart

Now create an upstart job in /etc/init to run gunicorn.sh

nano /etc/init/gunicorn.conf

And put in it:

description "Gunicorn application server handling myproject"

start on runlevel [2345]

stop on runlevel [!2345]

respawn

setuid john

setgid www-data

chdir /path/to/project

exec bash gunicorn.sh

Now you can start gunicorn like any service :

service gunicorn restart

The only remaining step is to pass request to gunicorn in nginx, by a file like this:

upstream myproject {

    server unix:///tmp/gunicorn.sock;    # the socket will be created automatically

    }

server {

#...other stuff

location / {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;

        if (!-f $request_filename) {

            proxy_pass http://myproject;

            break;

        }

    }

}

Note 2: If you just started upstart, you may need to  reboot to be able to service gunicorn restart.

That's it!
Restart nginx and enjoy gunicorn.