Deployment in the production environment

Author:

Sixu Wei <reisa@sust.edu.cn>, Zhenyu Yang <yangzhenyu@sust.edu.cn>

Date:

Mar 24, 2026

This document provides a step-by-step guide for deploying the project in a production environment.

In production, Nginx is used as the reverse proxy, and Gunicorn runs the backend application.

Step 1: Configure environment variables

Based on prod.env, create a .env file in the project root directory.

Database configuration:

# Database name
MYSQL_DATABASE=myucspace

# Database password
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=your_secure_password_here

# Database host
MYSQL_HOST=db

# Database port
MYSQL_PORT=3306

Django configuration:

# Disable debug mode in production
DJANGO_DEBUG=false

# Django secret key (at least 50 characters)
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=your_very_long_random_secret_key

# Allowed hosts
DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost,127.0.0.1,example.com

# CSRF trusted domains (your domain with protocol)
CSRF_DOMAINS=https://example.com

# Local upload directory
LOCAL_UPLOAD_DIR=/data/uploads

# SM2 keys
SM2_PUBLIC_KEY=your_sm2_public_key
SM2_PRIVATE_KEY=your_sm2_private_key

Warning

For security, use strong, unique values for all secrets and keys. Consider using a secrets manager or environment variable management tool in production.

Note

FACE_SERVICE_URL is intentionally omitted here. The current Django backend and Android signage display flow do not depend on face-service.

WeChat Mini Program configuration:

# WeChat App ID
WECHAT_APP_ID=your_wechat_app_id

# WeChat App Secret
WECHAT_APP_SECRET=your_wechat_app_secret

WebAuthn configuration:

# WebAuthn Relying Party ID (your domain)
WEBAUTHN_RP_ID=example.com

# WebAuthn Relying Party Name
WEBAUTHN_RP_NAME='MyUCSpace'

# WebAuthn Origin (your domain with protocol)
WEBAUTHN_ORIGIN=https://example.com

Step 2: Build and run

# Build and run
sudo docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up --build -d

# Check service status
sudo docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml ps

# View logs (if any issues occur)
sudo docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml logs -f

Step 3: Initialize the database and create a user

# Run database migrations
sudo docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec backend python manage.py migrate

# Create an administrator account
sudo docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml exec backend python manage.py createsuperuser

Step 4: Configure HTTPS (optional but recommended)

Refer to the HTTPS Deployment Guide for detailed instructions on setting up HTTPS with Nginx.

Production access endpoints

Service	URL
Frontend	http://localhost
Backend API	http://localhost/api/v1/
Admin Panel	http://localhost/django-admin/

Domestic (China) image mirror configuration

If image pulls fail, configure a Docker mirror registry using the following command:

sudo -i
bash <(curl -sSL https://linuxmirrors.cn/docker.sh)

See more: Docker Installation & Registry Mirror Switcher.