Settings

This is an exhaustive list of settings for Gunicorn. Some settings are only able to be set from a configuration file. The setting name is what should be used in the configuration file. The command line arguments are listed as well for reference on setting at the command line.

Note

Settings can be specified by using environment variable GUNICORN_CMD_ARGS. All available command line arguments can be used. For example, to specify the bind address and number of workers:

$ GUNICORN_CMD_ARGS="--bind=127.0.0.1 --workers=3" gunicorn app:app

New in version 19.7.

Config File

config

Command line: -c CONFIG or --config CONFIG

Default: './gunicorn.conf.py'

The Gunicorn config file.

A string of the form PATH, file:PATH, or python:MODULE_NAME.

Only has an effect when specified on the command line or as part of an application specific configuration.

By default, a file named gunicorn.conf.py will be read from the same directory where gunicorn is being run.

Changed in version 19.4: Loading the config from a Python module requires the python: prefix.

wsgi_app

Default: None

A WSGI application path in pattern $(MODULE_NAME):$(VARIABLE_NAME).

New in version 20.1.0.

Debugging

reload

Command line: --reload

Default: False

Restart workers when code changes.

This setting is intended for development. It will cause workers to be restarted whenever application code changes.

The reloader is incompatible with application preloading. When using a paste configuration be sure that the server block does not import any application code or the reload will not work as designed.

The default behavior is to attempt inotify with a fallback to file system polling. Generally, inotify should be preferred if available because it consumes less system resources.

Note

In order to use the inotify reloader, you must have the inotify package installed.

reload_engine

Command line: --reload-engine STRING

Default: 'auto'

The implementation that should be used to power reload.

Valid engines are:

• 'auto'
• 'poll'
• 'inotify' (requires inotify)

New in version 19.7.

reload_extra_files

Command line: --reload-extra-file FILES

Default: []

Extends reload option to also watch and reload on additional files (e.g., templates, configurations, specifications, etc.).

New in version 19.8.

spew

Command line: --spew

Default: False

Install a trace function that spews every line executed by the server.

This is the nuclear option.

check_config

Command line: --check-config

Default: False

Check the configuration and exit. The exit status is 0 if the configuration is correct, and 1 if the configuration is incorrect.

print_config

Command line: --print-config

Default: False

Print the configuration settings as fully resolved. Implies check_config.

Logging

accesslog

Command line: --access-logfile FILE

Default: None

The Access log file to write to.

'-' means log to stdout.

disable_redirect_access_to_syslog

Command line: --disable-redirect-access-to-syslog

Default: False

Disable redirect access logs to syslog.

New in version 19.8.

access_log_format

Command line: --access-logformat STRING

Default: '%(h)s %(l)s %(u)s %(t)s "%(r)s" %(s)s %(b)s "%(f)s" "%(a)s"'

The access log format.

Use lowercase for header and environment variable names, and put {...}x names inside %(...)s. For example:

%({x-forwarded-for}i)s

errorlog

Command line: --error-logfile FILE or --log-file FILE

Default: '-'

The Error log file to write to.

Using '-' for FILE makes gunicorn log to stderr.

Changed in version 19.2: Log to stderr by default.

loglevel

Command line: --log-level LEVEL

Default: 'info'

The granularity of Error log outputs.

Valid level names are:

• 'debug'
• 'info'
• 'warning'
• 'error'
• 'critical'

capture_output

Command line: --capture-output

Default: False

Redirect stdout/stderr to specified file in errorlog.

New in version 19.6.

logger_class

Command line: --logger-class STRING

Default: 'gunicorn.glogging.Logger'

The logger you want to use to log events in Gunicorn.

The default class (gunicorn.glogging.Logger) handles most normal usages in logging. It provides error and access logging.

You can provide your own logger by giving Gunicorn a Python path to a class that quacks like gunicorn.glogging.Logger.

logconfig

Command line: --log-config FILE

Default: None

The log config file to use. Gunicorn uses the standard Python logging module’s Configuration file format.

logconfig_dict

Default: {}

The log config dictionary to use, using the standard Python logging module’s dictionary configuration format. This option takes precedence over the logconfig option, which uses the older file configuration format.

Format: https://docs.python.org/3/library/logging.config.html#logging.config.dictConfig

New in version 19.8.

syslog_addr

Command line: --log-syslog-to SYSLOG_ADDR

Default: 'udp://localhost:514'

Address to send syslog messages.

Address is a string of the form:

• unix://PATH#TYPE : for unix domain socket. TYPE can be stream for the stream driver or dgram for the dgram driver. stream is the default.
• udp://HOST:PORT : for UDP sockets
• tcp://HOST:PORT : for TCP sockets

syslog

Command line: --log-syslog

Default: False

Send Gunicorn logs to syslog.

Changed in version 19.8: You can now disable sending access logs by using the disable_redirect_access_to_syslog setting.

syslog_prefix

Command line: --log-syslog-prefix SYSLOG_PREFIX

Default: None

Makes Gunicorn use the parameter as program-name in the syslog entries.

All entries will be prefixed by gunicorn.<prefix>. By default the program name is the name of the process.

syslog_facility

Command line: --log-syslog-facility SYSLOG_FACILITY

Default: 'user'

Syslog facility name

enable_stdio_inheritance

Command line: -R or --enable-stdio-inheritance

Default: False

Enable stdio inheritance.

Enable inheritance for stdio file descriptors in daemon mode.

Note: To disable the Python stdout buffering, you can to set the user environment variable PYTHONUNBUFFERED .

statsd_host

Command line: --statsd-host STATSD_ADDR

Default: None

host:port of the statsd server to log to.

New in version 19.1.

dogstatsd_tags

Command line: --dogstatsd-tags DOGSTATSD_TAGS

Default: ''

A comma-delimited list of datadog statsd (dogstatsd) tags to append to statsd metrics.

New in version 20.

statsd_prefix

Command line: --statsd-prefix STATSD_PREFIX

Default: ''

Prefix to use when emitting statsd metrics (a trailing . is added, if not provided).

New in version 19.2.

Process Naming

proc_name

Command line: -n STRING or --name STRING

Default: None

A base to use with setproctitle for process naming.

This affects things like ps and top. If you’re going to be running more than one instance of Gunicorn you’ll probably want to set a name to tell them apart. This requires that you install the setproctitle module.

If not set, the default_proc_name setting will be used.

default_proc_name

Default: 'gunicorn'

Internal setting that is adjusted for each type of application.

SSL

keyfile

Command line: --keyfile FILE

Default: None

SSL key file

certfile

Command line: --certfile FILE

Default: None

SSL certificate file

ssl_version

Command line: --ssl-version

Default: <_SSLMethod.PROTOCOL_TLS: 2>

SSL version to use.

Changed in version 19.7: The default value has been changed from ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1 to ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv23.

Changed in version 20.0: This setting now accepts string names based on ssl.PROTOCOL_ constants.

cert_reqs

Command line: --cert-reqs

Default: <VerifyMode.CERT_NONE: 0>

Whether client certificate is required (see stdlib ssl module’s)

ca_certs

Command line: --ca-certs FILE

Default: None

CA certificates file

suppress_ragged_eofs

Command line: --suppress-ragged-eofs

Default: True

Suppress ragged EOFs (see stdlib ssl module’s)

do_handshake_on_connect

Command line: --do-handshake-on-connect

Default: False

Whether to perform SSL handshake on socket connect (see stdlib ssl module’s)

ciphers

Command line: --ciphers

Default: None

SSL Cipher suite to use, in the format of an OpenSSL cipher list.

By default we use the default cipher list from Python’s ssl module, which contains ciphers considered strong at the time of each Python release.

As a recommended alternative, the Open Web App Security Project (OWASP) offers a vetted set of strong cipher strings rated A+ to C-. OWASP provides details on user-agent compatibility at each security level.

See the OpenSSL Cipher List Format Documentation for details on the format of an OpenSSL cipher list.

Security

limit_request_line

Command line: --limit-request-line INT

Default: 4094

The maximum size of HTTP request line in bytes.

This parameter is used to limit the allowed size of a client’s HTTP request-line. Since the request-line consists of the HTTP method, URI, and protocol version, this directive places a restriction on the length of a request-URI allowed for a request on the server. A server needs this value to be large enough to hold any of its resource names, including any information that might be passed in the query part of a GET request. Value is a number from 0 (unlimited) to 8190.

This parameter can be used to prevent any DDOS attack.

limit_request_fields

Command line: --limit-request-fields INT

Default: 100

Limit the number of HTTP headers fields in a request.

This parameter is used to limit the number of headers in a request to prevent DDOS attack. Used with the limit_request_field_size it allows more safety. By default this value is 100 and can’t be larger than 32768.

limit_request_field_size

Command line: --limit-request-field_size INT

Default: 8190

Limit the allowed size of an HTTP request header field.

Value is a positive number or 0. Setting it to 0 will allow unlimited header field sizes.

Warning

Setting this parameter to a very high or unlimited value can open up for DDOS attacks.

Server Hooks

on_starting

Default:

def on_starting(server):
    pass

Called just before the master process is initialized.

The callable needs to accept a single instance variable for the Arbiter.

on_reload

Default:

def on_reload(server):
    pass

Called to recycle workers during a reload via SIGHUP.

The callable needs to accept a single instance variable for the Arbiter.

when_ready

Default:

def when_ready(server):
    pass

Called just after the server is started.

The callable needs to accept a single instance variable for the Arbiter.

pre_fork

Default:

def pre_fork(server, worker):
    pass

Called just before a worker is forked.

The callable needs to accept two instance variables for the Arbiter and new Worker.

post_fork

Default:

def post_fork(server, worker):
    pass

Called just after a worker has been forked.

The callable needs to accept two instance variables for the Arbiter and new Worker.

post_worker_init

Default:

def post_worker_init(worker):
    pass

Called just after a worker has initialized the application.

The callable needs to accept one instance variable for the initialized Worker.

worker_int

Default:

def worker_int(worker):
    pass

Called just after a worker exited on SIGINT or SIGQUIT.

The callable needs to accept one instance variable for the initialized Worker.

worker_abort

Default:

def worker_abort(worker):
    pass

Called when a worker received the SIGABRT signal.

This call generally happens on timeout.

The callable needs to accept one instance variable for the initialized Worker.

pre_exec

Default:

def pre_exec(server):
    pass

Called just before a new master process is forked.

The callable needs to accept a single instance variable for the Arbiter.

pre_request

Default:

def pre_request(worker, req):
    worker.log.debug("%s %s" % (req.method, req.path))

Called just before a worker processes the request.

The callable needs to accept two instance variables for the Worker and the Request.

post_request

Default:

def post_request(worker, req, environ, resp):
    pass

Called after a worker processes the request.

The callable needs to accept two instance variables for the Worker and the Request.

child_exit

Default:

def child_exit(server, worker):
    pass

Called just after a worker has been exited, in the master process.

The callable needs to accept two instance variables for the Arbiter and the just-exited Worker.

New in version 19.7.

worker_exit

Default:

def worker_exit(server, worker):
    pass

Called just after a worker has been exited, in the worker process.

The callable needs to accept two instance variables for the Arbiter and the just-exited Worker.

nworkers_changed

Default:

def nworkers_changed(server, new_value, old_value):
    pass

Called just after num_workers has been changed.

The callable needs to accept an instance variable of the Arbiter and two integers of number of workers after and before change.

If the number of workers is set for the first time, old_value would be None.

on_exit

Default:

def on_exit(server):
    pass

Called just before exiting Gunicorn.

The callable needs to accept a single instance variable for the Arbiter.

Server Mechanics

preload_app

Command line: --preload

Default: False

Load application code before the worker processes are forked.

By preloading an application you can save some RAM resources as well as speed up server boot times. Although, if you defer application loading to each worker process, you can reload your application code easily by restarting workers.

sendfile

Command line: --no-sendfile

Default: None

Disables the use of sendfile().

If not set, the value of the SENDFILE environment variable is used to enable or disable its usage.

New in version 19.2.

Changed in version 19.4: Swapped --sendfile with --no-sendfile to actually allow disabling.

Changed in version 19.6: added support for the SENDFILE environment variable

reuse_port

Command line: --reuse-port

Default: False

Set the SO_REUSEPORT flag on the listening socket.

New in version 19.8.

chdir

Command line: --chdir

Default: '/home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/gunicorn-docs/checkouts/20.1.0/docs/source'

Change directory to specified directory before loading apps.

daemon

Command line: -D or --daemon

Default: False

Daemonize the Gunicorn process.

Detaches the server from the controlling terminal and enters the background.

raw_env

Command line: -e ENV or --env ENV

Default: []

Set environment variables in the execution environment.

Should be a list of strings in the key=value format.

For example on the command line:

$ gunicorn -b 127.0.0.1:8000 --env FOO=1 test:app

Or in the configuration file:

raw_env = ["FOO=1"]

pidfile

Command line: -p FILE or --pid FILE

Default: None

A filename to use for the PID file.

If not set, no PID file will be written.

worker_tmp_dir

Command line: --worker-tmp-dir DIR

Default: None

A directory to use for the worker heartbeat temporary file.

If not set, the default temporary directory will be used.

Note

The current heartbeat system involves calling os.fchmod on temporary file handlers and may block a worker for arbitrary time if the directory is on a disk-backed filesystem.

See How do I avoid Gunicorn excessively blocking in os.fchmod? for more detailed information and a solution for avoiding this problem.

user

Command line: -u USER or --user USER

Default: 1005

Switch worker processes to run as this user.

A valid user id (as an integer) or the name of a user that can be retrieved with a call to pwd.getpwnam(value) or None to not change the worker process user.

group

Command line: -g GROUP or --group GROUP

Default: 205

Switch worker process to run as this group.

A valid group id (as an integer) or the name of a user that can be retrieved with a call to pwd.getgrnam(value) or None to not change the worker processes group.

umask

Command line: -m INT or --umask INT

Default: 0

A bit mask for the file mode on files written by Gunicorn.

Note that this affects unix socket permissions.

A valid value for the os.umask(mode) call or a string compatible with int(value, 0) (0 means Python guesses the base, so values like 0, 0xFF, 0022 are valid for decimal, hex, and octal representations)

initgroups

Command line: --initgroups

Default: False

If true, set the worker process’s group access list with all of the groups of which the specified username is a member, plus the specified group id.

New in version 19.7.

tmp_upload_dir

Default: None

Directory to store temporary request data as they are read.

This may disappear in the near future.

This path should be writable by the process permissions set for Gunicorn workers. If not specified, Gunicorn will choose a system generated temporary directory.

secure_scheme_headers

Default: {'X-FORWARDED-PROTOCOL': 'ssl', 'X-FORWARDED-PROTO': 'https', 'X-FORWARDED-SSL': 'on'}

A dictionary containing headers and values that the front-end proxy uses to indicate HTTPS requests. These tell Gunicorn to set wsgi.url_scheme to https, so your application can tell that the request is secure.

The dictionary should map upper-case header names to exact string values. The value comparisons are case-sensitive, unlike the header names, so make sure they’re exactly what your front-end proxy sends when handling HTTPS requests.

It is important that your front-end proxy configuration ensures that the headers defined here can not be passed directly from the client.

forwarded_allow_ips

Command line: --forwarded-allow-ips STRING

Default: '127.0.0.1'

Front-end’s IPs from which allowed to handle set secure headers. (comma separate).

Set to * to disable checking of Front-end IPs (useful for setups where you don’t know in advance the IP address of Front-end, but you still trust the environment).

By default, the value of the FORWARDED_ALLOW_IPS environment variable. If it is not defined, the default is "127.0.0.1".

pythonpath

Command line: --pythonpath STRING

Default: None

A comma-separated list of directories to add to the Python path.

e.g. '/home/djangoprojects/myproject,/home/python/mylibrary'.

paste

Command line: --paste STRING or --paster STRING

Default: None

Load a PasteDeploy config file. The argument may contain a # symbol followed by the name of an app section from the config file, e.g. production.ini#admin.

At this time, using alternate server blocks is not supported. Use the command line arguments to control server configuration instead.

proxy_protocol

Command line: --proxy-protocol

Default: False

Enable detect PROXY protocol (PROXY mode).

Allow using HTTP and Proxy together. It may be useful for work with stunnel as HTTPS frontend and Gunicorn as HTTP server.

PROXY protocol: http://haproxy.1wt.eu/download/1.5/doc/proxy-protocol.txt

Example for stunnel config:

[https]
protocol = proxy
accept  = 443
connect = 80
cert = /etc/ssl/certs/stunnel.pem
key = /etc/ssl/certs/stunnel.key

proxy_allow_ips

Command line: --proxy-allow-from

Default: '127.0.0.1'

Front-end’s IPs from which allowed accept proxy requests (comma separate).

Set to * to disable checking of Front-end IPs (useful for setups where you don’t know in advance the IP address of Front-end, but you still trust the environment)

raw_paste_global_conf

Command line: --paste-global CONF

Default: []

Set a PasteDeploy global config variable in key=value form.

The option can be specified multiple times.

The variables are passed to the the PasteDeploy entrypoint. Example:

$ gunicorn -b 127.0.0.1:8000 --paste development.ini --paste-global FOO=1 --paste-global BAR=2

New in version 19.7.

strip_header_spaces

Command line: --strip-header-spaces

Default: False

Strip spaces present between the header name and the the :.

This is known to induce vulnerabilities and is not compliant with the HTTP/1.1 standard. See https://portswigger.net/research/http-desync-attacks-request-smuggling-reborn.

Use with care and only if necessary.

Server Socket

bind

Command line: -b ADDRESS or --bind ADDRESS

Default: ['127.0.0.1:8000']

The socket to bind.

A string of the form: HOST, HOST:PORT, unix:PATH, fd://FD. An IP is a valid HOST.

Changed in version 20.0: Support for fd://FD got added.

Multiple addresses can be bound. ex.:

$ gunicorn -b 127.0.0.1:8000 -b [::1]:8000 test:app

will bind the test:app application on localhost both on ipv6 and ipv4 interfaces.

If the PORT environment variable is defined, the default is ['0.0.0.0:$PORT']. If it is not defined, the default is ['127.0.0.1:8000'].

backlog

Command line: --backlog INT

Default: 2048

The maximum number of pending connections.

This refers to the number of clients that can be waiting to be served. Exceeding this number results in the client getting an error when attempting to connect. It should only affect servers under significant load.

Must be a positive integer. Generally set in the 64-2048 range.

Worker Processes

workers

Command line: -w INT or --workers INT

Default: 1

The number of worker processes for handling requests.

A positive integer generally in the 2-4 x $(NUM_CORES) range. You’ll want to vary this a bit to find the best for your particular application’s work load.

By default, the value of the WEB_CONCURRENCY environment variable, which is set by some Platform-as-a-Service providers such as Heroku. If it is not defined, the default is 1.

worker_class

Command line: -k STRING or --worker-class STRING

Default: 'sync'

The type of workers to use.

The default class (sync) should handle most “normal” types of workloads. You’ll want to read Design for information on when you might want to choose one of the other worker classes. Required libraries may be installed using setuptools’ extras_require feature.

A string referring to one of the following bundled classes:

• sync
• eventlet - Requires eventlet >= 0.24.1 (or install it via pip install gunicorn[eventlet])
• gevent - Requires gevent >= 1.4 (or install it via pip install gunicorn[gevent])
• tornado - Requires tornado >= 0.2 (or install it via pip install gunicorn[tornado])
• gthread - Python 2 requires the futures package to be installed (or install it via pip install gunicorn[gthread])

Optionally, you can provide your own worker by giving Gunicorn a Python path to a subclass of gunicorn.workers.base.Worker. This alternative syntax will load the gevent class: gunicorn.workers.ggevent.GeventWorker.

threads

Command line: --threads INT

Default: 1

The number of worker threads for handling requests.

Run each worker with the specified number of threads.

A positive integer generally in the 2-4 x $(NUM_CORES) range. You’ll want to vary this a bit to find the best for your particular application’s work load.

If it is not defined, the default is 1.

This setting only affects the Gthread worker type.

Note

If you try to use the sync worker type and set the threads setting to more than 1, the gthread worker type will be used instead.

worker_connections

Command line: --worker-connections INT

Default: 1000

The maximum number of simultaneous clients.

This setting only affects the Eventlet and Gevent worker types.

max_requests

Command line: --max-requests INT

Default: 0

The maximum number of requests a worker will process before restarting.

Any value greater than zero will limit the number of requests a worker will process before automatically restarting. This is a simple method to help limit the damage of memory leaks.

If this is set to zero (the default) then the automatic worker restarts are disabled.

max_requests_jitter

Command line: --max-requests-jitter INT

Default: 0

The maximum jitter to add to the max_requests setting.

The jitter causes the restart per worker to be randomized by randint(0, max_requests_jitter). This is intended to stagger worker restarts to avoid all workers restarting at the same time.

New in version 19.2.

timeout

Command line: -t INT or --timeout INT

Default: 30

Workers silent for more than this many seconds are killed and restarted.

Value is a positive number or 0. Setting it to 0 has the effect of infinite timeouts by disabling timeouts for all workers entirely.

Generally, the default of thirty seconds should suffice. Only set this noticeably higher if you’re sure of the repercussions for sync workers. For the non sync workers it just means that the worker process is still communicating and is not tied to the length of time required to handle a single request.

graceful_timeout

Command line: --graceful-timeout INT

Default: 30

Timeout for graceful workers restart.

After receiving a restart signal, workers have this much time to finish serving requests. Workers still alive after the timeout (starting from the receipt of the restart signal) are force killed.

keepalive

Command line: --keep-alive INT

Default: 2

The number of seconds to wait for requests on a Keep-Alive connection.

Generally set in the 1-5 seconds range for servers with direct connection to the client (e.g. when you don’t have separate load balancer). When Gunicorn is deployed behind a load balancer, it often makes sense to set this to a higher value.

Note

sync worker does not support persistent connections and will ignore this option.