Gunicorn service can't read environment variables

March 2, 2017 10.3k views
Nginx Django PostgreSQL Ubuntu 16.04
lcbacellar
By:
lcbacellar

I am having some troubles to configure a Django app (using virtualenv) with Postgres, Nginx, and Gunicorn on Ubuntu 16.04.

Everything worked fine until I started setting some environment variables for some Django configuration variables. Ex.: SECRETKEY = os.environ['DJANGOSECRET_KEY'].

I have tried a lot of options like setting variables on virtualenv's activate file, setting variables on ubuntu, and on gunicorn.service file but nothing is working.

Does anyone know how to work on this issue? How to set the environment variables?

4 comments
  • lcbacellar March 2, 2017

    I could make it work by defining the variables on gunicorn command in the file /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service but I still think that it is not the best solution =/

    [Service]
...
ExecStart=/virtuall_env_path/bin/gunicorn --workers 3 --bind unix:/path_to_myproject.sock myproject.wsgi:application -e my_var=value -e my_var2=value2
...
  • kameruchi May 11, 2017

    Hi! Instead of adding the variables to the gunicorn command line, you could load them through a file:
    <on gunicorn.service>
    [Service]
    ...
    EnvironmentFile=/pathto/somefilewith_secrets
    ...
    This should make the trick.
    (dont forget to create the file with those secrets)

  • gregkaleka September 12, 2017

    Oh man - you saved me. Thanks!

  • jamesncl May 5, 2019

    Note that the format of EnvironmentFile needs to be:

    some_secret=secretvalue
another_secret=blah
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1 Answer
kamaln7 MOD February 5, 2018

This question was answered by @kameruchi:

Hi! Instead of adding the variables to the gunicorn command line, you could load them through a file:
<on gunicorn.service>
[Service]
...
EnvironmentFile=/pathto/somefilewith_secrets
...
This should make the trick.
(dont forget to create the file with those secrets)

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