The configuration file

Gunicorn 0.5 introduced the ability to read configuration from a file. Gunicorn will either look for "gunicorn.conf.py" in the current directory or a file referred through the -c flag.

See github.com/benoitc/gunicorn/blob/master/examples/gunicorn.conf.py.sample for an example of configuration file.

Default configuration settings are:

bind='127.0.0.1:8000',
daemon=False,
debug=False,
logfile='-',
loglevel='info',
pidfile=None,
workers=1,
umask=0,
user=None,
group=None,

after_fork=lambda server, worker: server.log.info(
                "worker=%s spawned pid=%s" % (worker.id, str(worker.pid))),

before_fork=lambda server, worker: server.log.info(
                "worker=%s spawning" % worker.id),

before_exec=lambda server: server.log.info("forked child, reexecuting")

after_fork:

this function is called by the worker after forking. Arguments are the master and worker instances.

before_fork:

this function is called by the worker before forking. Arguments are the master and worker instances.

before_exec:

this function is called before relaunching the master. This happens when the master receive HUP or USR2 signals.

bind:

address on which workers are listening. It could be a tcp address IP:PORT or a unix address unix:/path/to/sockfile.

daemon:

Start in daemonized mode.

debug:

if set to True, only one worker will be launch and`the variable wsgi.multiprocess will be set to False.

group:

the group on which workers processes will be launched.

logfile:

path to the log file. - (stdout) by default.

loglevel:

set debug level: info, debug, error

pidfile:

file where master PID number will be saved

umask:

in daemon mode, fix user mask of master.

user:

the user on which workers processes will be launched.

Production setup

While some others HTTP proxies can be used we strongly advice you to use NGINX. If you choose another proxy server, make sure it can do buffering to handle slow clients.

An example config file for use with nginx is available at github.com/benoitc/gunicorn/blob/master/examples/nginx.conf.

You may want to monitor Gunicorn service instead of launching it as daemon. You could for example use runit for that purpose. An example config file for use with runit is available at github.com/benoitc/gunicorn/blob/master/examples/gunicorn_rc.