[FIXED] Gunicorn, no module named 'myproject

Issue

I'm installing a previously built website on a new server. I'm not the original developer.

I've used Gunicorn + nginx in the past to keep the app alive (basically following this tutorial), but am having problems with it here.

I source venv/bin/activate, then ./manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 works well and everything is running as expected. I shut it down and run gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 myproject.wsgi:application, and get the following:

[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15259] [INFO] Starting gunicorn 19.6.0
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15259] [INFO] Listening at: http://0.0.0.0:8000 (15259)
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15259] [INFO] Using worker: sync
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15262] [INFO] Booting worker with pid: 15262
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15262] [ERROR] Exception in worker process
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/arbiter.py", line 557, in spawn_worker
    worker.init_process()
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 126, in init_process
    self.load_wsgi()
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/workers/base.py", line 136, in load_wsgi
    self.wsgi = self.app.wsgi()
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/app/base.py", line 67, in wsgi
    self.callable = self.load()
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 65, in load
    return self.load_wsgiapp()
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/app/wsgiapp.py", line 52, in load_wsgiapp
    return util.import_app(self.app_uri)
  File "/var/www/myproject/venv/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gunicorn/util.py", line 357, in import_app
    __import__(module)
ImportError: No module named 'myproject.wsgi'
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15262] [INFO] Worker exiting (pid: 15262)
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15259] [INFO] Shutting down: Master
[2016-09-13 01:11:47 +0000] [15259] [INFO] Reason: Worker failed to boot.

I believe it has something to do with the structure of the whole application. Before, I've built apps with the basic structure of:

myproject
├── manage.py
├── myproject
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── views.py
│   ├── component1
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   └── views.py
│   ├── component2
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   └── views.py
├── venv
│   ├── bin
│   └── ...

This one, instead, has a structure like:

myproject
├── apps
│   ├── blog
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   ├── views.py
│   │     └── ...
│   ├── catalogue
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   ├── views.py
│   │     └── ...
│   ├── checkout
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   ├── views.py
│   │     └── ...
│   ├── core
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   ├── views.py
│   │     └── ...
│   ├── customer
│   ├── dashboard
│   └──  __init__.py
├── __init__.py
├── manage.py
├── project_static
│   ├── assets
│   ├── bower_components
│   └── js
├── public
│   ├── emails
│   ├── media
│   └── static
├── settings
│   ├── base.py
│   ├── dev.py
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── local.py
│   └── production.py
├── templates
│   ├── base.html
│   ├── basket
│   ├── blog
│   └── ....
├── urls.py
├── venv
│   ├── bin
│   ├── include
│   ├── lib
│   ├── pip-selfcheck.json
│   └── share
└── wsgi.py

So, there's no 'main' module running the show, which is what I expect gunicorn is looking for.

Any thoughts?

wsgi.py:

import os

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "settings")

application = get_wsgi_application()

Solution

Your error message is

ImportError: No module named 'myproject.wsgi'

You ran the app with

gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 myproject.wsgi:application

And wsgi.py has the line

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "settings")

This is the disconnect. In order to recognize the project as myproject.wsgi the parent directory would have to be on the python path... running

cd .. && gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 myproject.wsgi:application

Would eliminate that error. However, you would then get a different error because the wsgi.py file refers to settings instead of myproject.settings. This implies that the app was intended to be run from the root directory instead of one directory up. You can figure this out for sure by looking at the code- if it uses absolute imports, do they usually say from myproject.app import ... or from app import .... If that guess is correct, your correct commmand is

gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 wsgi:application

If the app does use myproject in all of the paths, you'll have to modify your PYTHONPATH to run it properly...

PYTHONPATH=`pwd`/.. gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 myproject.wsgi:application

Answered By - Paul Becotte