Help debugging static files issue

[jasonwo...@gmail.com]

Hey there!

Sorry for the bother, but I'm running into some issues dealing with static files for a new site I'm building with Django. I'm new to django, but I swear I went through at least 5 hours of StackOverflow comments and other guides before hitting up this group. Anyway:

# The issue:

Static files are not being served correctly, even though they are correctly being collected using the `./manage.py collectstatic`, and placed in a `static/` directory under the project root.

# Debugging information

OS: Ubuntu 16.04 (4.4.0-31-generic)

Nginx (reverse proxy and serving static file): 1.11.2

uWSGI (application server): 2.0.13.1

Django: 1.9.8

# Where my debugging left me

In my nginx logs I'm finding requests that correctly get through to uWSGI (page returns fine, though without static assets), where going manually to the URI (www.example.com/static/home/global.css) returns a 404 error.

The nginx error log for the request in question:

[date_stuff] [error] [log_stuff]: *1 open() "/server/website/<project_name>/static/home/global.css" failed (2: No such file or directory), client: [redacted], server: [redacted], request: "GET /static/home/global.css HTTP/2.0", host: "[redacted]", referrer: "https://www.[redacted]"

Some things that I noticed:
I don't know how, but the request sent to nginx for the global.css asset is trying to get it from `/server/website/<project_name>/static/home/global.css`, instead of `/server/website/static/home/global.css`.

I'm not sure at that point whether it's an nginx problem or a django one, but for some reason the `<project_name>` is being added, and nginx is trying to fetch the static files from the wrong place.

# Project overview

Server/                        <----- Located at the root of the machine at /server

---- Vagrantfile

---- db/

---- letsencrypt/

---- nginx/

---- uwsgi/

---- website/                                <--- Project root

    ---- <project_name>/

    ---- home/                               <--- home app

    ---- manage.py/

 

    ---- templates/

    ---- static/

        ---- admin/

        ---- home/

            ---- global.css                   <--- collected from the static dir in the `home` app

# <project_name>/settings.py config:

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'home',
]

 

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': ['templates'],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
                'django.template.context_processors.static',
            ],
        },
    },
]

 

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
# STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static/')   <------ I've tried this and just hardcoding

STATIC_ROOT = '/server/website/static/'

# Nginx server config:

    location /static {
        alias /server/website/static; <---- I've tried this and setting `root /server/website`

Cheers and thanks for any help guys (and sorry for the bother on such a beginner question),

Jason

[Ajay M]

Dear developer,
Please try to setup static files directory in your settings.py file.
It should be a list, like below

STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static', 'app'),
                    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
                    ]
Please let me know if you still face this issue.