An Ansible playbook for daemonising long running django manage.py commands using runit

django_manage_daemon.yml

---

- hosts: django
  user: root

  vars:
    - runit_app_dir: /etc/sv
    - runit_enabled_dir: /etc/service
    - dj_manage_daemons:
        - slug: "unique_name_slug_1"
          command: "rqworker queue_name_1"
        - slug: "unique_name_slug_2"
          command: "rqworker queue_name_2"


  tasks:

    - name: "install runit"
      apt: name=runit

    - name: create runit daemons dirs
      file: path="{{runit_app_dir}}/{{item.slug}}" state=directory
      with_items: dj_manage_daemons

    - name: upload runit run scripts for daemons
      template: src=templates/runit/django_manage/etc/sv/run
                dest="{{runit_app_dir}}/{{item.slug}}/run" mode=0755
      with_items: dj_manage_daemons

    - name: start the daemon by creating a symlink in /etc/service
      file: src="{{runit_app_dir}}/{{item.slug}}" dest="{{runit_enabled_dir}}/{{item.slug}}" state=link
      with_items: dj_manage_daemons

run

#!/bin/sh

exec chpst -u {{user}} {{virtualenv_python}} {{django_base_dir}}/manage.py {{item.command}}

put the file run template file in templates/runit/django_manage/etc/sv/run

I created this in order to daemonise a django redis queue (https://github.com/ui/django-rq), but it could be used for any management command that you want to run forever. You could use it as a cron substitute if you wanted to execute something in python every 10 seconds (not easy with cron).