Install a debian server

[glogiotatidis]

Install a debian server with:

• Nginx
• Gunicorn
• Postgresql
• Supervisord
• Data and Database backup and restore scripts
• Email Sending
• SSH w/ ip limit

[kosfar]

Hi all,

I think I can manage this one. Maybe it is necessary to describe in more details the operational needs that this server will support (here, at wiki, next meeting?), because based on the listed software I assume that special care for security should be given too.

[glogiotatidis]

Hi kosdar,

Thanks for picking this one up!

The server will support our development needs and temporary a production instance. We need to run dev, stage, production instances on this server thus the listed software. I can immediately give you access to our mediatemple server to get started with a the basic configuration as a first step and then we setup the django instances.

More questions? I'm in #verese on freenode if you prefer live chat ;)

Sounds good?

[glogiotatidis]

Oops, that's kosfar sorry for the typo ;)

[kosfar]

No probs. I am in #verese channel right now, we may continue from there. Please check if you receive my messages!

[kosfar]

What we have till now:

• Postfix installed with a basic outgoing email sending configuration
• Postgresql installed, three databases, one for each environment, one user with read, update,delete privileges on them, one backup script for the whole cluster (10 days back)

[kosfar]

Hello everyone,

nginx, supervisor and gunicorn and their dependencies are now installed. All packages were installed through debian apt-get. Nothing configured so far regarding the above software because I want a little help to understand the way that nginx and gunicorn will "talk" with the three django instances. So two questions here:

• I saw that pip was also option versus apt-get for gunicorn . From a serverop point of view the advantages of apt-get are straight forward. From a developer's point of view?
• Could you provide a brief walk through of what steps you propose to be made in nginx & gunicorn configuration terms in order to interact with the 3-environment setup? Just a rough description would be fine.

Also installed monit. It monitors postfix and postgresql so far. Nginx and supervisord are on the list too.

[glogiotatidis]

Since we run different python environments of the same server I suggest that you remove the packages gunicorn and that we install it in each virtualenv.

Here is the main concept:

• Gunicorn provides a "green threaded" (i.e. small and fast) server for python and django apps. Creates a socket (tcp or unix) for clients to connect to
• Supervisord is a watchdog. You should configure it in a way that we always have a couple of gunicorn processes running per environment.
• Nginx will proxy all django requests to the gunicorn server and it will redirect serve all media requests (e.g. files with the /media redirectory)

In the web you can find numerous nginx + supervisord + gunicorn examples. I'm not proposing one because they follow different paths to implement more or less the same thing. I'll let you find what fits you best. If you care to find out how I did it myself, you can look into /old directory of the server. There you can find nginx, supervisor and gunicorn configurations.

Hope that helps!

Keep rocking, -g

[kosfar]

Sounds good. I will have a look at the /old folder and I will keep you informed about my progress.