The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty

Question

There are three files in my settings folder:

base.py
development.py
production.py

I've put this line in my wsgi.py file:

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "myproj.settings.development")

But when I run gunicorn myproj.wsgi:application and try to load application in browser I get:

ImproperlyConfigured: The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty.

I definitely have SECRET_KEY in base.py and in development.py I have this line:

from base import *

I've updated manage.py and specified new settings file there just to test if runserver will work and it works.

UPDATE: And now I have put SECRET_KEY into development.py. When I run gunicorn myproj.wsgi:application --settings 'myproj.settings.development' the error is still there.

I know that there are better ways to store it but for now I would like to store it there. Then I guess it will be better to store it as environment variable or maybe something else. — Dmitrii Mikhailov, May 19 '14 at 08:46
you mean secret key? I've tried import `settings.development` from `manage.py shell` and SECRET_KEY is there. — Dmitrii Mikhailov, May 19 '14 at 08:52
Yes, I've already did it. That's why I can use `manage.py`. But it still isn't working with gunicorn. — Dmitrii Mikhailov, May 19 '14 at 08:57
@MaximeLorant, nope. That guy had problems running `manage.py runserver` and as I described in question I can do that. — Dmitrii Mikhailov, May 19 '14 at 11:34

Dmitrii Mikhailov · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-22T15:22:30.877

15

Just needed to run :

gunicorn myproj.wsgi:application --env DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE='myproj.settings.development'

There's a line

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "videotube.settings.development")

in my wsgi.py. I don't know why but gunicorn doesn't care about it.

edited May 22 '14 at 15:22

answered May 19 '14 at 11:40

Dmitrii Mikhailov

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Strange..I'm having the same issue but I have an environment variable specified in /etc/environment for DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE and SECRET_KEY. When I run the project with the development server it runs fine and picks up the secret key. Maybe gunicorn is unable to read the environment file? – wjh18 Sep 04 '19 at 01:45

The SECRET_KEY setting must not be empty

1 Answers1