Nginx – configure nginx for serving django development static files

djangonginx

I am using Nginx to serve static files on django development server. However I can't make it work. The server runs fine but nginx is not able to find static files.

This is my settings in nginx.conf:

listen       8080;
server_name  localhost;

#charset koi8-r;
#access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

location / {
    #root   html;
    #index  index.html index.htm;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}
location /static/  {
    alias /path/Documents/python_projects/to_pm/static/;
    access_log off;
    expires    30d;
}

My project settings.py:

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

# for production
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')

And I have also used python manage.py collectstatics to copy all static files to /path/Documents/python_projects/to_pm/static/ folder.

But when I use http://localhost:8080 the site comes up very ugly, clearly the static files are not serving by nginx. How can I fix this?

My error logs said

13: Permission denied` for static files

I check the users and see nginx is running under root as master process and nobody as worker process. I can't change user to root and I can't change the user to my default user as I get this error if I change the user:

[emerg] getgrnam("root") failed in /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:2

Best Answer

I have found the answer to my question:

The answer is in this article:

https://gist.github.com/jhjguxin/6208474

As it points out:

Nginx needs to have read permission of the files that should be served AND 
have execute permission in each of the parent directories along the path from 
the root to the served files.

The static folder needs to owned by your nginx user too.

Related Solutions

Nginx – Help needed setting up nginx to serve static files

I looked at the nginx error logs and found that it was trying to serve the media from /var/django/myproject/site_media/site_media instead of /var/django/myproject/site_media --weird.

I changed root /var/django/myproject/site_media; to root /var/django/myproject; and it works now.

Nginx – Deploying django under a sub-URL with Nginx/Fastcgi

Just pushed through the same issue myself- it turns out that the link you provided to the Django change doc was the key to solving the problem.

Django > 1.0 uses SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO to route URLs, as the doc explained. So I took that and ran with it. For a project called 'myproject', which you'd like rooted at mydomain.com/myproject/, try this.

location ~ /myproject/(.*)$ {
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8080;
    fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO /$1;
    SCRIPT_NAME /myproject;
}

The rest of the fastcgi params I have in another site-wide config file. So your example would look something like

server {
    listen 8080;
    server_name localhost;

    location /myproject/ {
        # host and port to fastcgi server
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:3030;

        fastcgi_param  QUERY_STRING       $query_string;
        fastcgi_param  REQUEST_METHOD     $request_method;
        fastcgi_param  CONTENT_TYPE       $content_type;
        fastcgi_param  CONTENT_LENGTH     $content_length;

        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_NAME        /myproject;
        fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO          /$1;
        fastcgi_param  REQUEST_URI        $request_uri;
        fastcgi_param  DOCUMENT_URI       $document_uri;
        fastcgi_param  DOCUMENT_ROOT      $document_root;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_PROTOCOL    $server_protocol;

        fastcgi_param  GATEWAY_INTERFACE  CGI/1.1;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_SOFTWARE    nginx/$nginx_version;

        fastcgi_param  REMOTE_ADDR        $remote_addr;
        fastcgi_param  REMOTE_PORT        $remote_port;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_ADDR        $server_addr;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_PORT        $server_port;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_NAME        $server_name;
    }
}

with the same urls.py. The only issues I've had so far have been minor troubles keeping DRY, eg where settings.py requires absolute URLs and Django doesn't think to prepend the SCRIPT_NAME on the URL (think settings.LOGIN_URL, settings.MEDIA_URL).

This might be obvious, but also make sure you have another location that points to your static and admin media.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Nginx – Help needed setting up nginx to serve static files

Nginx – Deploying django under a sub-URL with Nginx/Fastcgi

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