Can't get Apache to serve django admin static files - django

Question

I'm trying to deploy Django to apache but can't get it to serve my static admin files. It seems to be looking for them under /var/www/static and I can't seem to be able to change that.
The admin site seem to be working except for styling. I get a title and a log in form. My django app is working too. It's the static files for the admin that aren't served.
Using Django 1.4.1.
The files are under /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static and linked to from /home/dutt/vaccapp/backend/static/admin.
The apache error log says this
[Sun Sep 30 10:57:20 2012] [error] [client 192.168.1.10] File does not exist: /var/www/home, referer: http://dathui.example.com/vaccapp/admin/
[Sun Sep 30 10:57:20 2012] [error] [client 192.168.1.10] File does not exist: /var/www/home, referer: http://dathui.example.com/vaccapp/admin/
But I'm not sure how to change it.
In my django site config I have
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin me#host.com
ServerRoot "/home/dutt/vaccapp"
DocumentRoot "/home/dutt/vaccapp"
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /home/dutt/vaccapp/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
Alias /static/ "/home/dutt/vaccapp/backend/static/"
<Directory "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static">
Order allow,deny
Options Indexes
Allow from all
IndexOptions FancyIndexing
</Directory>
ServerRoot is not set in apache2.conf.
From my settings.py
STATIC_ROOT = '/home/dutt/vaccapp/backend/'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
Nothing added to STATICFILES_DIRS.
This is added to my apache2.conf
WSGIScriptAlias /vaccapp /home/dutt/vaccapp/backend/wsgi.py
WSGIPythonPath /home/dutt/vaccapp
<Directory /home/dutt/vaccapp>
<Files wsgi.py>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Files>
</Directory>

Answer 1

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX is set by default to /static/admin/ # Deprecated in Django 1.4 (now using STATIC_URL + 'admin/'. The result is the same.
Here's the fixes to the apache config:
Alias /static/admin "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static"
Alias /static "/home/dutt/vaccapp/backend/static"
<Directory "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static">
Order allow,deny
Options Indexes
Allow from all
IndexOptions FancyIndexing
</Directory>
And the WsgiScriptAlias had to be moved from the main apache config into the VirtualHost.
After a long discussion we found the problem was that Django did not install the admin static properly ... they were symlinked to eachother (very weird). A Django reinstall fixed it and it worked fine now.

Answer 2

My low reputation forces me to write a whole answer to add a small detail to Igor's answer.
I simply added the apache config part to my configuration, but it was not sufficient. I had to change:
"/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static"
to
"/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static/admin"
both in the first Alias and in the <Directory> directive.

Answer 3

Just like Blazor I had to use a small variation of the original. My setup includes graphite-web, which is using django admin. I'm just posting it for reference.
My apache's virtual host:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName graphite.myhost.com
Redirect permanent / https://graphite.myhost.com/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName graphite.myhost.com
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/graphite.cert
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl_graphite.key
SSLStrictSNIVHostCheck on
WSGIDaemonProcess _graphite processes=5 threads=5 display-name='%{GROUP}' inactivity-timeout=120 user=_graphite group=_graphite
WSGIProcessGroup _graphite
WSGIImportScript /usr/share/graphite-web/graphite.wsgi process-group=_graphite application-group=%{GLOBAL}
WSGIScriptAlias / /usr/share/graphite-web/graphite.wsgi
AliasMatch ^/admin/(.*)static/admin(.*)$ /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static/admin/$2
<Directory "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/static/admin/">
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
Alias /content/ /usr/share/graphite-web/static/
<Location "/content/">
SetHandler None
</Location>
<Location "/">
Order allow,deny
allow from all
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted Zone"
AuthBasicProvider wsgi
WSGIAuthUserScript /var/www/django_auth.wsgi
Require valid-user
</Location>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/graphite-web_error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/graphite-web_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
I also added STATIC_URL = 'static/' just to make sure I didn't have any issues with the regex.

Answer 4

Try using next
python manage.py collectstatic
The staticfiles app - Django documentation

Answer 5

I got similar problem when running Django + Apache, the Django admin site misses all styling. This is how I solved it:
apache conf: httpd-app.conf
Alias /static "/...path/to/your/django.../site-packages/django/contrib/admin/static"
<Directory "/...path/to/your/django.../site-packages/django/contrib/admin/static">
Require all granted
</Directory>
The /...path/to/your/django.../ above, you can find it by pip show django