How to gracefully restart django running fcgi behind nginx?

Question

I\'m running a django instance behind nginx connected using fcgi (by using the manage.py runfcgi command). Since the code is loaded into memory I can\'t reload new code with

Answer 1

I came across this page while looking for a solution for this problem. Everything else failed, so I looked in to the source code :)

The solution seems to be much simpler. Django fcgi server uses flup, which handles the HUP signal the proper way: it shuts down, gracefully. So all you have to do is to:

1. send the HUP signal to the fcgi server (the pidfile= argument of runserver will come in handy)

2. wait a bit (flup allows children processes 10 seconds, so wait a couple more; 15 looks like a good number)

3. sent the KILL signal to the fcgi server, just in case something blocked it

4. start the server again

That's it.