Nginx unable to proxy django application through gunicorn

Question

I'm trying to deploy a Django app in a Ubuntu Server 18.04 using Nginx and Gunicorn. Every tool seems to work properly, at least, from logs and status points of view.

The point is that if I log into my server using SSH and try to use curl, gunicorn is able to see the request and handle it. However, if I write directly my IP, I get simply the typical Welcome to nginx home page and the request is completely invisible to gunicorn, so it seems nginx is unable to locate and pass the request to the gunicorn socket.

I'm using nginx 1.14.0, Django 2.2.1, Python 3.6.7, gunicorn 19.9.0 and PostgreSQL 10.8.

This is my nginx config

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name localhost;

        location /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
        location /static/ {
                alias /home/django/myproject/myproject;
        }

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

And these are my gunicorn.sock

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=/run/gunicorn.sock

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target

and gunicorn.service

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

[Service]
User=django
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/django/myproject/myproject
ExecStart=/home/django/myproject/myproject/myproject/bin/gunicorn \
        --access-logfile - \
        --workers 3 \
        --bind unix:/run/gunicorn.sock \
        MyProject.wsgi:application

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I've been following this guide (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-django-with-postgres-nginx-and-gunicorn-on-ubuntu-18-04), where most of all has worked as expected, but with the difference that my project is not a completely new one as in the tutorial, but cloned from my git repo (however, it's tested and the code works properly)

I was expecting the Django admin to be accessible from my browser already with this config, but it's not. I try to access my IP from my browser and I get Welcome to nginx but also 404 if I visit /admin. In addition, the gunicorn logs shows no requests.

In the other hand, if I log through SSH into my server and I execute curl --unix-socket /run/gunicorn.sock localhost, I can see in the gunicorn logs the request done by curl.

Any help is welcome.. I've been here for hours and I'm not able to get even 1 request from outside the server.

PD: it's also not something related to the ports in the server, since when I access the root of my IP, I receive the nginx answer. It just seems like Nginx has no config at all.

Håken Lid Håken Lid · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-02T12:48:59

in your nginx config, you should use your proper server_name instead of localhost

  server_name mydomain.com;

If not, you will fall back to the default nginx server, which returns the "welcome to nginx" message. You can change which virtual server is default by changing the order of servers, removing the nginx default, or using the default_server parameter. You can also listen to multiple server names.

  listen      80 default_server;
  server_name mydomain.com localhost;

If the Host header field does not match a server name, NGINX Plus routes the request to the default server for the port on which the request arrived. The default server is the first one listed in the nginx.conf file, unless you include the default_server parameter to the listen directive to explicitly designate a server as the default.

https://docs.nginx.com/nginx/admin-guide/web-server/web-server/#setting-up-virtual-servers

Remember that you have to reload the nginx config after making changes. sudo nginx -s reload for example.

Nginx unable to proxy django application through gunicorn

2 Answers