500.html instead of 404.html

Question

I have basic application with admin panel and direct_to_template home page. When I type url which does not match any from urls I receive 404 error, but when I set DEBUG to false I receive 500.html instead of 404.html. Any idea why?

Answer 1

Django serves a 500 when a view function fails, which means there must be some non debug specific code breaking.

The only way to tell is see what exception django is logging either via your server logs or the email that django sends to the ADMINS list.

Answer 2

I would also check TEMPLATE_DIRS path in settings.py as this was the problem in my case. Django raises 404 error, but as it was not able to find 404.html (in the path specified in TEMPLATE_DIRS) so it raised 500 error - template not found (which is either show in the browser when debug is True or server log, when debug=false).