Django Deployment to Ubuntu 18.04

In this guide I will go through all the steps to create a VPS, secure it and deploy a Django application. This is a summarized document from this digital ocean doc

Any commands with "$" at the beginning run on your local machine and any "#" run when logged into the server

Create A Digital Ocean Droplet

Use this link and get $10 free. Just select the $5 plan unless this a production app.

Security & Access

Creating SSH keys (Optional)

You can choose to create SSH keys to login if you want. If not, you will get the password sent to your email to login via SSH

To generate a key on your local machine

ssh-keygen

Hit enter all the way through and it will create a public and private key at

~/.ssh/id_rsa
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

You want to copy the public key (.pub file)

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the entire output and add as an SSH key for Digital Ocean

Login To Your Server

If you setup SSH keys correctly the command below will let you right in. If you did not use SSH keys, it will ask for a password. This is the one that was mailed to you

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Create a new user

It will ask for a password, use something secure. You can just hit enter through all the fields. I used the user "djangoadmin" but you can use anything

adduser djangoadmin

Give root privileges

usermod -aG sudo djangoadmin

SSH keys for the new user

Now we need to setup SSH keys for the new user. You will need to get them from your local machine

Exit the server

You need to copy the key from your local machine so either exit or open a new terminal

exit

You can generate a different key if you want but we will use the same one so lets output it, select it and copy it

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Log back into the server

ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Add SSH key for new user

Navigate to the new users home folder and create a file at '.ssh/authorized_keys' and paste in the key

cd /home/djangoadmin
mkdir .ssh
cd .ssh
nano authorized_keys

Paste the key and hit "ctrl-x", hit "y" to save and "enter" to exit

Login as new user

You should now get let in as the new user

ssh djangoadmin@YOUR_SERVER_IP

Disable root login

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change the following

PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no

Reload sshd service

sudo systemctl reload sshd

Simple Firewall Setup

See which apps are registered with the firewall

sudo ufw app list

Allow OpenSSH

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH

Enable firewall

sudo ufw enable

To check status

sudo ufw status

We are now done with access and security and will move on to installing software

Software

Update packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Install Python 3, Postgres & NGINX

sudo apt install python3-pip python3-dev libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib nginx curl

Postgres Database & User Setup

sudo -u postgres psql

You should now be logged into the pg shell

Create a database

CREATE DATABASE <your_database_name>;

Create user

CREATE USER <username> WITH PASSWORD 'abc123!';

Set default encoding, tansaction isolation scheme (Recommended from Django)

ALTER ROLE <username> SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';
ALTER ROLE <username> SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
ALTER ROLE <username> SET timezone TO 'UTC';

Give User access to database

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE <your_database> TO <username>;

Quit out of Postgres

\q

Virtual Environment

You need to install the python3-venv package

sudo apt install python3-venv

Create project directory

mkdir pyapps
cd pyapps

Create venv

python3 -m venv ./venv

Activate the environment

source venv/bin/activate

Git & Upload

Pip dependencies

From your local machine, create a requirements.txt with your app dependencies. Make sure you push this to your repo

pip freeze > requirements.txt

Create a new repo and push to it (you guys know how to do that)

Clone the project into the app folder on your server (Either HTTPS or setup SSH keys)

# git clone https://github.com/yourgithubname/<your_project>.git

Install pip modules from requirements

You could manually install each one as well

# pip install -r requirements.txt

Local Settings Setup

Add code to your settings.py file and push to server

try:
    from .local_settings import *
except ImportError:
    pass

Create a file called local_settings.py on your server along side of settings.py and add the following

- SECRET_KEY
- ALLOWED_HOSTS
- DATABASES
- DEBUG
- EMAIL\_\*

Run Migrations

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Create super user

python manage.py createsuperuser

Create static files

python manage.py collectstatic

Create exception for port 8000

sudo ufw allow 8000

Run Server

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Test the site at YOUR_SERVER_IP:8000

Add some data in the admin area

Gunicorn Setup

Install gunicorn

pip install gunicorn

Add to requirements.txt

pip freeze > requirements.txt

Test Gunicorn serve

gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 <app_name>.wsgi

Your images, etc will be gone

Stop server & deactivate virtual env

<ctrl-c>
deactivate

Open gunicorn.socket file

# sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.socket

• Copy this code, paste it in and save

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=/run/gunicorn.sock

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target

Open gunicorn.service file

# sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service

• Copy this code, paste it in and save

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn daemon
Requires=gunicorn.socket
After=network.target

[Service]
User=djangoadmin
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/djangoadmin/pyapps/<your_project>
ExecStart=/home/djangoadmin/pyapps/venv/bin/gunicorn \
          --access-logfile - \
          --workers 3 \
          --bind unix:/run/gunicorn.sock \
          <your_app_name>.wsgi:application

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Start and enable Gunicorn socket

# sudo systemctl start gunicorn.socket
# sudo systemctl enable gunicorn.socket

Check status of gunicorn

# sudo systemctl status gunicorn.socket

Check the existence of gunicorn.sock

# file /run/gunicorn.sock

NGINX Setup

Create project folder

# sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/<your_project>

Copy this code and paste into the file

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name YOUR_IP_ADDRESS;

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location /static/ {
        root /home/djangoadmin/pyapps/<your_project>;
    }

    location /media/ {
        root /home/djangoadmin/pyapps/<your_project>;
    }

    location / {
        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://unix:/run/gunicorn.sock;
    }
}

Enable the file by linking to the sites-enabled dir

# sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/<your_project> /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Test NGINX config

# sudo nginx -t

Restart NGINX

# sudo systemctl restart nginx

Remove port 8000 from firewall and open up our firewall to allow normal traffic on port 80

# sudo ufw delete allow 8000
# sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

You will probably need to up the max upload size to be able to create listings with images

Open up the nginx conf file

# sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add this to the http{} area

client_max_body_size 20M;

Reload NGINX

# sudo systemctl restart nginx

Media File Issue

You may have some issues with images not showing up. I would suggest, deleting all data and starting fresh as well as removing the "photos" folder in the "media folder"

# sudo rm -rf media/photos

Domain Setup

Go to your domain registrar and create the following a record

@  A Record  YOUR_IP_ADDRESS
www  CNAME  example.com

Go to local_settings.py on the server and change "ALLOWED_HOSTS" to include the domain

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['IP_ADDRESS', 'example.com', 'www.example.com']

Edit /etc/nginx/sites-available/<your_project>

server {
    listen: 80;
    server_name xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx example.com www.example.com;
}

Reload NGINX & Gunicorn

sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart gunicorn