Django and Nginx try_files 403 for site root page - django

Question

I use such Nginx configuration for the domain:
server_name_in_redirect off;
listen 80;
server_name ~^(www\.)?(.+)$;
root /var/www/$2/htdocs;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ $uri/index.htm #django;
index index.html index.htm;
}
location #django {
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8801;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name;
fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port;
fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
fastcgi_pass_header Authorization;
fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
}
Django URL config:
urlpatterns = patterns('',
url(r'^$', home, name='home'),
url(r'index.htm', home, name='home'),
url(r'^(?P<name>.*).htm$', plain_page, name="plain_page"),
}
all urls like http://domain.com/somepage.htm works good, except http://domain.com/ it always shows 403 by Nginx.
if you add static index.htm file to the site root - it's opened because of try_files directive
if you have no static index.htm, but call http://domain.com/index.htm page is opened by django
buf it you have no static index.htm and open http://domain.com/ you get no page, but by idea
index.htm should be looked and passed to the django as the last in the try_files chain.
how to make http://domain.com/ work (should call django's index.htm) in this case?

Answer 1

Add this
location = / {
rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.htm last;
}
underneath the root line to do a rewrite of the URI before further processing.
PS. You have probably sorted this out during the year since your asked, but here it is for other to see.

Answer 2

A better solution is you provide a / url in your urls.py is remove the
root /var/www/$2/htdocs;
Then only include the root in location {} blocks where you serve up static assets.