django-uwsgi-nginx

Example of a Django site served by uWSGI and nginx for testing and education purposes.

Implements a simple "Hello, world!", but with a few extras (templates, CSS, images, etc.). Follows Django best practices as much as possible.

Note: this example should be considered insecure! Although basic security settings are in place, make sure you do your own research on site security! Start with the Django documentation, for example.

Installation steps on Debian 8

• Install nginx and uWSGI as system-wide services.

  apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
  apt-get install nginx
  apt-get install uwsgi
  

• git clone this repo, for example in /var/www. Note: if you choose a different location, change nginx.conf and uwsgi.ini accordingly after cloning.

  cd /var/www
  git clone https://github.com/nicodv/django-uwsgi-nginx.git
  

• Generate a Django secret key using the supplied script (python django-uwsgi-nginx/tools/django_secret_keygen.py), and put it in the uwsgi.ini file.

• Create a virtualenv with the latest pip, setuptools, and django packages, for example in /var/www/django-uwsgi-nginx/venv. Note: if you choose a different location, change uwsgi.ini accordingly.

• Install the Python plugin to uWSGI. Note: I assume Python 3 here. The Python 2 command is the same, minus the 3. Also, if you're using Python 2, edit uwsgi.ini accordingly by editing the plugin name.

  apt-get install uwsgi-plugin-python3
  

• Remove nginx's default site config and make a symbolic link to the nginx.conf file in the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory.

  rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
  ln -s /var/www/django-uwsgi-nginx/conf/nginx.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/
  service nginx restart
  

• Make symbolic links of the uwsgi.ini file to the /etc/uwsgi/apps-available and /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled directories.

  ln -s /var/www/django-uwsgi-nginx/conf/uwsgi.ini /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/
  ln -s /var/www/django-uwsgi-nginx/conf/uwsgi.ini /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled/
  

• Hack the uwsgi service to use the so-called emperor, which will automatically serve any .ini file in /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled. Do this by editing /etc/init.d/uwsgi and adding --emperor /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled after the service start command so that it reads "Starting $DESC" "$NAME" --emperor /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled). Then reload and restart the service:

  systemctl daemon-reload
  service uwsgi restart
  

• Create the log directories.

  mkdir -p /var/log/uwsgi
  

• Set permissions correctly for user www-data. Note: if you run as a different user, change /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, uwsgi.ini, and these commands accordingly.

  chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/django-uwsgi-nginx/
  chown www-data:www-data /var/log/uwsgi/
  

• Copy all static folders into the STATIC_ROOT directory:

  python manage.py collectstatic --settings=djangosite.settings.prod
  

• Check it out!

  http://<your.ip.add.ress>/helloworld/
  

Debugging

nginx logs can be found in /var/log/nginx, and uWSGI logs in /var/log/uwsgi. You can also try to run the uWSGI server manually with:

uwsgi --ini /var/www/django-uwsgi-nginx/conf/uwsgi.ini

Other Notes

• This example is set up in such a way that by changing the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE reference in uwsgi.ini, you can easily switch between site settings. You can, for example, choose development server settings by referring to %(site).settings.dev.