How to gracefully restart django running fcgi behind nginx?

django nginx deployment fastcgi
evo picture evo · Dec 12, 2008 · Viewed 13.2k times · Source

I'm running a django instance behind nginx connected using fcgi (by using the manage.py runfcgi command). Since the code is loaded into memory I can't reload new code without killing and restarting the django fcgi processes, thus interrupting the live website. The restarting itself is very fast. But by killing the fcgi processes first some users' actions will get interrupted which is not good. I'm wondering how can I reload new code without ever causing any interruption. Advices will be highly appreciated!

Answer

Martin v. Löwis picture Martin v. Löwis · Dec 12, 2008

I would start a new fcgi process on a new port, change the nginx configuration to use the new port, have nginx reload configuration (which in itself is graceful), then eventually stop the old process (you can use netstat to find out when the last connection to the old port is closed).

Alternatively, you can change the fcgi implementation to fork a new process, close all sockets in the child except for the fcgi server socket, close the fcgi server socket in parent, exec a new django process in the child (making it use the fcgi server socket), and terminate the parent process once all fcgi connections are closed. IOW, implement graceful restart for runfcgi.

Related questions

Deploying Django with gunicorn and nginx

This is a broad question but I'd like to get a canonical answer. I have been trying to deploy a site using gunicorn and nginx in Django. After reading tons of tutorials I have been successful but I can't be …

Read More
how to deploy django under a suburl behind nginx

I have a django application running on http://localhost:12345 . I'd like user to access it via url http://my.server.com/myapp . I use nginx to reverse proxy to it like the following: ... ... server_name my.server.com; location /myapp { …

Read More
Where can I find the error logs of nginx, using FastCGI and Django?

I'm using Django with FastCGI + nginx. Where are the logs (errors) stored in this case?

Read More