Question

I upgraded to Django 1.4 and now my admin static files won’t load.

relevant part of my settings file looks like:

MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(SITE_ROOT, 'media')

# URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a
# trailing slash.
# Examples: "http://media.lawrence.com/media/", "http://example.com/media/"
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

# Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to.
# Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files
# in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS.
# Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(SITE_ROOT, 'static')

# URL prefix for static files.
# Example: "http://media.lawrence.com/static/"
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

# URL prefix for admin static files -- CSS, JavaScript and images.
# Make sure to use a trailing slash.
# Examples: "http://foo.com/static/admin/", "/static/admin/".
ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX = '/static/admin/'

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
#    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.DefaultStorageFinder',
)

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    # django apps
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.admindocs',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

and I collecstatic-ed.

So now the files show up in my project’s static directory, but when I try to access, for example, http://localhost:8000/static/admin/js/actions.js I get a 404 with “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/media/js/actions.js” does not exist

Why is django looking in my media directory instead of my static directory, and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

The problem was actually that I was using runcserver instead of runserver, and runcserver has hardcoded:

option_list = BaseCommand.option_list + (
    make_option('--noreload', action='store_false', dest='use_reloader', default=True,
        help='Tells Django to NOT use the auto-reloader.'),
    make_option('--adminmedia', dest='admin_media_path', default='',
        help='Specifies the directory from which to serve admin media.'),
)

try:
    path = admin_media_path or django.__path__[0] + '/contrib/admin/media'

instead of ‘/contrib/admin/static’

using runcserver –adminmedia ‘static/admin’ clears things up.