The Configuration File

Gunciorn 0.5 introduced the ability to use a Python configuration file. Gunicorn will look for gunicorn.conf.py in the current working directory or what ever path is specified on the command line with the -c option.

A configuration file with default settings would look like this:

bind = "127.0.0.1:8000" # Or "unix:/tmp/gunicorn.sock"
daemon = False          # Whether work in the background
debug = False           # Some extra logging
logfile = "-"           # Name of the log file
loglevel = "info"       # The level at which to log
pidfile = None          # Path to a PID file
workers = 1             # Number of workers to initialize
umask = 0               # Umask to set when daemonizing
user = None             # Change process owner to user
group = None            # Change process group to group

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

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

def before_exec(server):
    serer.log.info("Forked child, reexecuting.")

after_fork(server, worker):

This is called by the worker after initialization.

before_fork(server, worker):

This is called by the worker just before forking.

before_exec(server):

This function is called before relaunching the master. This happens when the master receives a HUP or USR2 signal.

bind:

The address on which workers are listening. It can be a TCP address with a format of IP:PORT or a Unix socket address like unix:/path/to/socketfile.

daemon:

Whether or not to detach the server from the controlling terminal.

debug:

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

group:

The group in which worker processes will be launched.

logfile:

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

loglevel:

The level at which to log. info, debug, or error for instance. Only log messages of equal or greater severity are logged.

pidfile:

A file to store the master's PID.

umask:

Used to set the umask when daemonizing.

user:

The user as which worker processes will by 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.