Deploying Nautobot: Web Service and Worker¶

Like most Django applications, Nautobot runs as a WSGI application behind an HTTP server.

Nautobot comes preinstalled with uWSGI to use as the WSGI server, however other WSGI servers are available and should work similarly well. Gunicorn is a popular alternative.

This document will guide you through setting up uWSGI and establishing Nautobot web services to run on system startup.

Nautobot includes a nautobot-server start management command that directly invokes uWSGI. This command behaves exactly as uWSGI does, but allows us to maintain a single entrypoint into the Nautobot application.

$ nautobot-server start --help

Configuration¶

As the nautobot user, copy and paste the following into $NAUTOBOT_ROOT/uwsgi.ini:

[uwsgi]
; The IP address (typically localhost) and port that the WSGI process should listen on
socket = 127.0.0.1:8001

; Fail to start if any parameter in the configuration file isn’t explicitly understood by uWSGI
strict = true

; Enable master process to gracefully re-spawn and pre-fork workers
master = true

; Allow Python app-generated threads to run
enable-threads = true

;Try to remove all of the generated file/sockets during shutdown
vacuum = true

; Do not use multiple interpreters, allowing only Nautobot to run
single-interpreter = true

; Shutdown when receiving SIGTERM (default is respawn)
die-on-term = true

; Prevents uWSGI from starting if it is unable load Nautobot (usually due to errors)
need-app = true

; By default, uWSGI has rather verbose logging that can be noisy
disable-logging = true

; Assert that critical 4xx and 5xx errors are still logged
log-4xx = true
log-5xx = true

;
; Advanced settings (disabled by default)
; Customize these for your environment if and only if you need them.
; Ref: https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Options.html
;

; Number of uWSGI workers to spawn. This should typically be 2n+1, where n is the number of CPU cores present.
; processes = 5

; If using subdirectory hosting e.g. example.com/nautobot, you must uncomment this line. Otherwise you'll get double paths e.g. example.com/nautobot/nautobot/.
; See: https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Changelog-2.0.11.html#fixpathinfo-routing-action
; route-run = fixpathinfo:

This configuration should suffice for most initial installations, you may wish to edit this file to change the bound IP address and/or port number, or to make performance-related adjustments. See uWSGI documentation for the available configuration parameters.

Setup systemd¶

We'll use systemd to control both uWSGI and Nautobot's background worker process.

Nautobot service¶

First, copy and paste the following into /etc/systemd/system/nautobot.service:

[Unit]
Description=Nautobot WSGI Service
Documentation=https://nautobot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="NAUTOBOT_ROOT=/opt/nautobot"

User=nautobot
Group=nautobot
PIDFile=/var/tmp/nautobot.pid
WorkingDirectory=/opt/nautobot

ExecStart=/opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start --pidfile /var/tmp/nautobot.pid --ini /opt/nautobot/uwsgi.ini
ExecStop=/opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start --stop /var/tmp/nautobot.pid
ExecReload=/opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start --reload /var/tmp/nautobot.pid

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Nautobot Worker service¶

Next, copy and paste the following into /etc/systemd/system/nautobot-worker.service:

[Unit]
Description=Nautobot Request Queue Worker
Documentation=https://nautobot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="NAUTOBOT_ROOT=/opt/nautobot"

User=nautobot
Group=nautobot
WorkingDirectory=/opt/nautobot

ExecStart=/opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server rqworker

Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Configure systemd¶

Because we just added new service files, you'll need to reload the systemd daemon:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Then, start the nautobot and nautobot-worker services and enable them to initiate at boot time:

$ sudo systemctl enable --now nautobot nautobot-worker

Verify the service¶

You can use the command systemctl status nautobot.service to verify that the WSGI service is running:

● nautobot.service - Nautobot WSGI Service
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/nautobot.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2021-03-05 22:23:33 UTC; 35min ago
       Docs: https://nautobot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
   Main PID: 6992 (nautobot-server)
      Tasks: 16 (limit: 9513)
     Memory: 221.1M
     CGroup: /system.slice/nautobot.service
             ├─6992 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7007 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7010 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7013 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             ├─7016 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />
             └─7019 /opt/nautobot/bin/python3 /opt/nautobot/bin/nautobot-server start />

Once you've verified that the WSGI service and worker are up and running, move on to HTTP server setup.

Troubleshooting¶

SSL Error¶

If you see the error SSL error: decryption failed or bad record mac, it is likely due to a mismatch in the uWSGI configuration and Nautobot's database settings. See this conversation for more details.

• Set DATABASES -> default -> CONN_MAX_AGE=0 in nautobot_config.py and restart the Nautobot service.