Howto: running Zine with Nginx and WSGI server

written by Andrey Khoronko, on Mar 27, 2009 2:05:00 AM.

This article will look at running Zine with Nginx, Cogen and Supervisor on Ubuntu server.

Zine

Zine is an open-source blog engine written in Python.

Install dependencies:

$ sudo aptitude install python2.5-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev
$ sudo easy_install Werkzeug Jinja2 MySQL-python SQLAlchemy simplejson pytz Babel lxml html5lib

Download Zine sources:

$ mkdir ~/temp && cd ~/temp
$ hg clone http://dev.pocoo.org/hg/zine-main zine
$ cd zine
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
$ checkinstall --pkgname="zine" --pkgversion=0.2-dev --maintainer="foo@bar.com" --provides="zine" --strip=yes --stripso=yes --backup=no -y

Create your blog folder and folder for blog media (images, files, …):

$ mkdir ~/zine
$ mkdir ~/zine/uploads

You can put favicon.ico and robots.txt files to ~/zine too.

Nginx

Nginx is a high perfomance and light weight HTTP and reverse proxy server.

Install dependencies:

$ sudo aptitude install libc6 libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl0.9.8 libssl-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev lsb-base

Download Nginx and install it:

$ cd ~/temp
$ wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.7.42.tar.gz && tar zxvf nginx-0.7.42.tar.gz
$ cd nginx-0.7.42
$ ./configure --with-http_ssl_module && make
$ checkinstall --pkgname="nginx" --pkgversion=0.7.42 --maintainer="foo@bar.com" --provides="nginx" --strip=yes --stripso=yes --backup=no -y

Create init script for nginx daemon:

$ sudo touch /etc/init.d/nginx
$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
$ sudo update-rc.d nginx defaults

Content of /etc/init.d/nginx:

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          nginx
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:     $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description:       starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/nginx/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/local/nginx/nginx
PID=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.pid
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx

test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
        . /etc/default/nginx
fi

set -e

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PID --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PID --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile $PID --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
        sleep 1
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PID --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
	echo "$NAME."
        ;;
  reload)
      echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
      start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile $PID --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
      echo "$NAME."
      ;;
  *)
      N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
      echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
      exit 1
      ;;
esac

exit 0

Change Nginx configuration /usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf:

user www-data;
worker_processes 1;

error_log logs/error.log warn;

pid nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
    include mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request '
                      '"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile on;

    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;

    server_names_hash_bucket_size 128;
    
    keepalive_timeout 75 20;

    gzip on;
    gzip_min_length 1100;
    gzip_buffers 4 32k;
    gzip_comp_level 2;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types text/plain text/html text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
	
    include sites/yourblogname.com;
}

Create /usr/local/nginx/sites/yourblogname.com:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name www.yourblogname.com;
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://yourblogname.com/$1 redirect; 
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourblogname.com;

    error_log logs/yourblogname_error.log warn;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;

        access_log logs/yourblogname_access.log main;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico {
        root /home/username/zine;
	access_log off;
        expires 30d;
    }

    location = /robots.txt {
        root /home/username/zine;
	access_log off;
        expires 30d;
    }
    
    location ~ ^/_shared/(akismet_spam_filter|core|dark_vessel_colorscheme|eric_the_fish|miniblog_theme|myrtle_theme|vessel_theme)/(.+\.(?:jpe?g|gif|png|ico|bmp|js|css|gz|swf))$ {
	alias /usr/local/share/zine/htdocs/$1/$2;
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;
    }
    
    location ~ ^/_shared/(?!(pygments_support|creole_parser|markdown_parser|typography))([^/]+)/(.+\.(?:jpe?g|gif|png|ico|bmp|js|css|gz|swf))$ {
    	alias /home/username/zine/plugins/$2/shared/$3;
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;
    }
    
    location /uploads/ {
	root /home/username/zine;
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;
	autoindex off;
    }

    location /admin {
        rewrite ^/(.*)$ https://yourblogname.com/$1 redirect;
    }
    
    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root html;
    }
    
    error_page 403 /403.html;    
    location = /403.html {
	root html;
    }
}

server {
    listen 443;
    server_name www.yourblogname.com;
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ https://yourblogname.com/$1 redirect;
}

server {
    listen 443;
    server_name yourblogname.com;

    error_log logs/yourblogname_admin_error.log warn;

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/some_ssl_cert.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/some_ssl_cert.key;
    ssl_session_timeout 5m;
    ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
    ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    add_header Front-End-Https on;

    location / {
        rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://yourblogname.com/$1 permanent;
    }

    location /admin {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;

        access_log logs/yourblogname_admin_access.log main;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico {
        root /home/username/zine;
	access_log off;
        expires 30d;
    }

    location ~ ^/_shared/(akismet_spam_filter|core|dark_vessel_colorscheme|eric_the_fish|miniblog_theme|myrtle_theme|vessel_theme)/(.+\.(?:jpe?g|gif|png|ico|bmp|js|css|gz|swf))$ {
	alias /usr/local/share/zine/htdocs/$1/$2;
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;
    }

    location ~ ^/_shared/(?!(pygments_support|creole_parser|markdown_parser|typography))([^/]+)/(.+\.(?:jpe?g|gif|png|ico|bmp|js|css|gz|swf))$ {
    	alias /home/username/zine/plugins/$2/shared/$3;
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;
    }
    
    location /uploads/ {
	root /home/username/zine;
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;
	autoindex off;
    }
    
    error_page 403 /403.html;    
    location = /403.html {
	root html;
    }

    error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root html;
    }
}

Cogen

Cogen is a crossplatform library for network oriented, coroutine based programming. We will use it as WSGI server.

$ sudo easy_install cogen

Put to the blog folder running script for Zine:

$ touch run_zine.py
$ chmod +x run_zine.py

Content of run_zine.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

INSTANCE_FOLDER = '/home/username/zine'
PLUGINS_FOLDER = os.path.join(INSTANCE_FOLDER, 'plugins/')
ZINE_LIB = '/usr/local/lib/zine'

POOL_SIZE = None
POOL_RECYCLE = None
POOL_TIMEOUT = None

BEHIND_PROXY = None

import sys
import os
if ZINE_LIB not in sys.path:
    sys.path.insert(0, ZINE_LIB)

if PLUGINS_FOLDER not in sys.path:
    sys.path.append(PLUGINS_FOLDER)

from zine import get_wsgi_app, override_environ_config
override_environ_config(POOL_SIZE, POOL_RECYCLE, POOL_TIMEOUT, BEHIND_PROXY)
application = get_wsgi_app(INSTANCE_FOLDER)

from cogen.web import wsgi
from cogen.web.async import sync_input
from cogen.common import *

m = Scheduler(default_priority=priority.LAST, default_timeout=15)
server = wsgi.WSGIServer(
           ('localhost', 8080),
            sync_input(application), 
            m,
            server_name='localhost')
m.add(server.serve)
try:
    m.run()
except (KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit):
    pass

Supervisor

Supervisor is a client/server system that allows to monitor and control a number of processes. If you run multiple sites on your server Supervisor is very useful for manage them.

Install Supervisor and create init script:

$ sudo easy_install supervisor
$ sudo echo_supervisord_conf > /etc/supervisord.conf
$ sudo touch /etc/init.d/supervisord
$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/supervisord
$ sudo update-rc.d supervisord defaults

Content of /etc/init.d/supervisord:

#!/bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          supervisor
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      S 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Starts/stops the supervisor daemon
# Description:       This starts and stops the supervisor dameon
#                    which is used to run and monitor arbitrary programs as
#                    services, e.g. application servers etc.
### END INIT INFO

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DESC="supervisor daemon"
NAME="supervisor"
DAEMON="/usr/bin/${NAME}d"
SUPERVISORCTL="/usr/bin/${NAME}ctl"
PIDFILE="/var/run/${NAME}d.pid"
SCRIPTNAME="/etc/init.d/$NAME"
CONFFILE="/etc/${NAME}d.conf"

test -x "$DAEMON" || exit 0
test -r "$CONFFILE" || exit 0

if [ -r "/etc/default/$NAME" ]; then
    . "/etc/default/$NAME"
fi

set -e

d_start() {
    start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile "$PIDFILE" \
        --exec "$DAEMON" \
        || echo -n " already running"
}

d_stop() {
    $SUPERVISORCTL shutdown
}

d_reload() {
    $SUPERVISORCTL reload
}

case "$1" in
  start)
    echo -n "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
    d_start
    echo "."
    ;;
  stop)
    echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
    d_stop
    echo "."
    ;;
  reload|force-reload)
    echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration..."
    d_reload
    echo "done."
  ;;
  restart)
    echo -n "Restarting $DESC: $NAME"
    d_stop
    sleep 1
    d_start
    echo "."
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: "$SCRIPTNAME" {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
    exit 3
    ;;
esac

exit 0

Modify /etc/supervisord.conf and add program section for running your Zine blog:

[program:zine]
command=/home/username/zine/run_zine.py
user=username

Final

Now you can launch your blog:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start
$ sudo /etc/init.d/supervisord start

Comments

Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back

Comment by Bill Brown jr — Jun 3, 2009 10:58:34 PM | # - re
Very useful. Many thanks for sharing.

Comment by Shekhar — Aug 14, 2009 11:20:29 PM | # - re

Kefafala vooday