Question

I have a django web application running on our apache2 production server using mod_python, but no static files are found (css,images … )

All our static stuff is under /var/my.site/example/static

/var/my.site/example/static/
                           |-admin/
                                  |-css/
                                  |-img/     
                           |-css/
                           |-js/
                           |-img/

Now I thought I just could alias all requests to my static stuff like so:

This is the apache2 conf:

<VirtualHost  123.123.123:443>
    ... SSL stuff ...
    RewriteEngine On    
    ReWriteOptions Inherit 
    <Location "/example">
        SetHandler python-program
        PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
        SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE example.settings
        PythonPath "[ \
            '/home/me/Envs/ex/lib/python2.6/site-packages',\
            '/var/my.site',\
            '/home/me/Envs/ex/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django',\
            '/home/me/Envs/ex/lib/python2.6/site-packages/MySQLdb',\
            '/var/my.site/example',\
            '/var/my.site/example/static'] + sys.path"
        PythonDebug Off

    </Location>

    Alias /example/static /var/my.site/example/static    
    <Directory /var/my.site/example/static>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

This is my settings.py

...
STATIC_ROOT = '/var/my.site'
STATIC_URL = '/example/static/'
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    "/var/my.site/example/static",
)
...

There is no errors in the apache-error log. But here log from apache-secure_access.log

[09/Aug/2012:12:37:55 +0200] "GET /example/admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 6694
[09/Aug/2012:12:37:55 +0200] "GET /example/static/css/base.css HTTP/1.1" 301 468
[09/Aug/2012:12:37:55 +0200] "GET /example/static/img/logo.png HTTP/1.1" 403 766
[09/Aug/2012:12:37:55 +0200] "GET /example/static/css/base.css/ HTTP/1.1" 500 756
[09/Aug/2012:12:37:55 +0200] "GET /example/static/admin/css/dashboard.css HTTP/1.1" 301 622

But this doesn’t work and I’m not sure, if I even, is on the right track. It does work when I set DEBUG = True But that’s just because django serves all the static files.

What am I doing wrong?

Does anyone know about a good tutorial or example?

Answer 1

After @supervacuo suggestion that I strip down everything from django, I got apache to serve the static files and realized what was wrong.

The problem was that <Location "/example"> got priority over Alias /example/static. It didn’t matter where I put the Alias (above or below the <Location> - tag).

To fix it I changed the STATIC_URL and STATIC_ROOT, than I could change the Alias not to interfere with the <Location> - tag

From:

STATIC_ROOT = '/var/my.site'
STATIC_URL = '/example/static/'

Alias /example/static /var/my.site/example/static

To:

STATIC_ROOT = '/var/my.site/example'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

Alias /static /var/my.site/example/static