After configuring nginx (reverse proxy) and gunicorn, env variables stop being detected (Django app on Ubuntu)

Question

On an ubuntu machine hosting my Django app (with postgres backend), my env variables were prefectly detected when I fired up gunicorn as my sole webserver using the command gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8080 --env DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings myproject.wsgi:application

Next, I installed nginx and configured it to act as a reverse proxy with gunicorn (using a digital ocean guide here). There is no supervisor. This new web server configuration fired up correctly, except now it doesn't detect the env variables at all.

Imagine my env variables are awake=1 and secret=abc123. I've already tried putting export awake=1 and export secret=abc123, in /etc/default/nginx, in gunicorn.conf, in /etc/environment (which sets them globally). I also tried adding them to nginx.conf as env awake=1; and env secret=abc123;.

Nothing worked.

Now it seems that nginx

removes all environment variables inherited from its parent process except the TZ variable

Source: http://nginx.org/en/docs/ngx_core_module.html#env Could this be the reason why nothing I'm trying has come close to working? Nevertheless, echo $awake yields 1 on the command line, which tells me that perhaps the variables are set, but being bypassed or overlooked.

It's become very frustrating. Can anyone help me figure this one out? Thanks in advance.

---

wsgi.py:

import os os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "myproject.settings") from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application from dj_static import Cling application = Cling(get_wsgi_application()) 

gunicorn.conf:

description "Gunicorn application server handling myproject" start on runlevel [2345] stop on runlevel [!2345] respawn setuid myuser setgid www-data chdir /home/myuser/directory/myproject/ exec /home/myuser/.virtualenvs/myvirtualenv/bin/gunicorn --chdir=/home/myuser/directory/ --workers 3 --bind unix:/home/myuser/directory/myproject/myproject.sock --env DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings myproject.wsgi:application 

/etc/nginx/sites-available/myproject:

server { listen 80; server_name myapp.cloudapp.net; location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; } location /static/ { root /home/myuser/directory/myproject; } location / { include proxy_params; proxy_pass http://unix:/home/myuser/directory/myproject/myproject.sock; } } 

Note: Please ask for more information if you need it

Answer 1

I suggest setting your env variables right where you're running gunicorn, like so: gunicorn --bind0.0.0.0:8080 -e var1=value1 -e var2=value2 myproject.wsgi:application. That should work for you.