Deploy Django Using Gunicorn and Nginx

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Install Packages from the Ubuntu Repositories for Python 3

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sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-dev libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib nginx

Create the PostgreSQL Database and User

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sudo -u postgres psql

We are setting the default encoding to UTF-8, which Django expects. We are also setting the default transaction isolation scheme to “read committed”, which blocks reads from uncommitted transactions. Lastly, we are setting the timezone. By default, our Django projects will be set to use UTC. These are all recommendations from the Django project itself:

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CREATE USER myprojectuser WITH PASSWORD 'password';
ALTER ROLE myprojectuser SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';
ALTER ROLE myprojectuser SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
ALTER ROLE myprojectuser SET timezone TO 'UTC';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE myproject TO myprojectuser;

Create a Python 3 Virtual Environment for your Project

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sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip
sudo -H pip3 install virtualenv
mkdir ~/myproject
cd ~/myproject
virtualenv myprojectenv
source myprojectenv/bin/activate

With your virtual environment active, install Django, Gunicorn, and the psycopg2 PostgreSQL adaptor with the local instance of pip:

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pip install django gunicorn psycopg2

Create and Configure a New Django Project

See: How To Set Up Django with Postgres, Nginx, and Gunicorn on Ubuntu 16.04 | DigitalOcean

Create a Gunicorn systemd Service File gunicorn.service in /etc/systemd/system/

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[Unit]
Description=gunicorn daemon
After=network.target

[Service]
User=sammy
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/sammy/myproject
ExecStart=/home/sammy/myproject/myprojectenv/bin/gunicorn --access-logfile - --workers 3 --bind unix:/home/sammy/myproject/myproject.sock myproject.wsgi:application

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start and enable gunicorn on system startup

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sudo systemctl start gunicorn
sudo systemctl enable gunicorn

Check for the Gunicorn Socket File

  • Check gunicorn status

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    sudo systemctl status gunicorn

  • Next, check for the existence of the myproject.sock file within your project directory:

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    ls /home/sammy/myproject
    manage.py  myproject  myprojectenv  myproject.sock  static

  • View gunicorn logs

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sudo journalctl -u gunicorn
  • If you make changes to the /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service file, reload the daemon to reread the service definition and restart the Gunicorn process by typing:
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sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart gunicorn

Configure Nginx to Proxy Pass to Gunicorn

creating and opening a new server block in Nginx’s sites-available directory:

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sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject

The comple nginx conf file

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server {
    listen 80;
    server_name server_domain_or_IP;

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location /static/ {
        root /home/sammy/myproject;
    }

    location / {
        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://unix:/home/sammy/myproject/myproject.sock;
    }
}

Now, we can enable the file by linking it to the sites-enabled directory:

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sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
  • Test nginx
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sudo nginx -t
  • Restart
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sudo systemctl restart nginx
  • Finally, we need to open up our firewall to normal traffic on port 80. Since we no longer need access to the development server, we can remove the rule to open port 8000 as well:
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sudo ufw delete allow 8000
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'