Nginx / Django: Accessing static files results in 403 Forbidden - django

Question

I've been trying to debug this for several hours and I'm not sure what else to check. My problem is that Nginx doesn't server Django static files. Accessing static files results in the error 403 Forbidden.
The exact error from nginx error log is:
2013/02/11 05:42:13 [error] 22526#0: *29 open() "/home/mydomain/public_html/test2/src/bootstrap.css" failed (13: Permission denied), client: XXX.XXX.XX.XX, server: mydomain.com, request: "GET /src/bootstrap.css HTTP/1.1", host: "www.mydomain.com"
Here is my nginx config file:
server {
listen XX.XX.X.XXX:80;
server_name mydomain.com;
root /home/mydomain/public_html/test2/app;
# serve directly - analogous for static/staticfiles
location /media/ {
# if asset versioning is used
if ($query_string) {
expires max;
}
}
location /admin/media/ {
# this changes depending on your python version
root /home/mydomain/public_html/test2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib;
}
location /src/ {
autoindex on;
root /home/mydomain/public_html/test2;
}
location / {
proxy_pass_header Server;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
proxy_connect_timeout 10;
proxy_read_timeout 10;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000/;
}
# what to serve if upstream is not available or crashes
error_page 500 502 503 504 /media/50x.html;
}
Static files are stored in /home/mydomain/public_html/test2/src.
I've tried chown mydomain.mydomain -R * and chmod 755 /home/mydomain -R * without any effect.

Answer 1

use this
btw. IfIsEvil
server {
listen 80;
server_name mydomain.com;
#access_log /var/log/nginx/x_access.log;
#error_log /var/log/nginx/x_error.log;
location /static {
alias /path/to/your/static;
}
location /media {
alias /path/to/your/media;
}
location / {
proxy_pass_header Server;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
proxy_connect_timeout 10;
proxy_read_timeout 10;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000/;
}
}

Answer 2

Here is a working solution to my initial problem:
server {
listen XX.XX.X.XXX:80;
server_name mydomain.com;
root /home/mydomain/public_html/test2/app;
location /admin/media/ {
# this changes depending on your python version
root /home/mydomain/public_html/test2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib;
}
location /src {
root /home/mydomain/public_html/test2;
}
location / {
proxy_pass_header Server;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
proxy_connect_timeout 10;
proxy_read_timeout 10;
proxy_pass http://localhost:8000/;
}
# what to serve if upstream is not available or crashes
error_page 500 502 503 504 /media/50x.html;
}

Answer 3

Another way to do this is to use try_files. The advantage of this is that Nginx will first look for a real file to serve, and if it fails to find one it passes execution to your django app. This is perfect for serving a dynamic sitemap.xml for example since you do not need to special-case the file in nginx.conf.
# Set default expires headers (used for static assets)
expires 30d;
server {
listen 80;
server_name mydomain.com;
root /some/path/assets/;
try_files $uri #django;
location #django {
expires -1d;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_pass http://unix:/some/path/server.sock;
}
location /static/admin/ {
alias /some/path/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/static/admin/;
}
}