django tutorial returns 'ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE'

Question

I'm following the django tutorial: version 1.8, Ubuntu 10.04, python 3.4 in a virtual environment. I seem to create a django project (yatest) on my Ubuntu server just fine and I start the development server:

(v1)cj@drop1:~/www/yatest$ python manage.py runserver
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
August 09, 2015 - 04:37:33
Django version 1.8.3, using settings 'yatest.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

but when I browse to http://myserver:8000 all I get in response is 'ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE'.

This is the first part of the tutorial before an app is even created. At this early stage in the tutorial it doesn't mention any error log I can check. My telnet client doesn't say anything crashed, and 'ctl-c' will shutdown the server process with no complaints.

Using netstat -lntp I verified no other processes are using port 8000. I do not have Apache installed. I do have gunicorn and nginx installed but both are stopped and not in use yet in the tutorial.

I'm rather new to linux; I could use some help finding an error log or other debugging tools to solve this. I don't doubt I've missed some basic OS setting or something to enable TCP access, etc..

Thanks Clark

Answer 1

Found my mistake. When starting a dev django server on dedicated server one MUST include the dedicated server's address in the command. This is not needed when launching a dev server on the same machine as your browser. So instead of

$python manage.py runserver

you have to run $python manage.py runserver <server ip>:8000.

So this is my inglorious start on stack exchange. You saw nothing! :P

Answer 2

If you're running natively in an virtual envrionment, then you need to specify a port and address:

python manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:8000

For containers, it's easiest to listen to all addresses:

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

For anybody using PyCharm in a docker environment, it's also worth knowing that PyCharm will override your docker-compose configuration to change the runserver command to bind to the port specified in the Host option in your Run/Debug Configurations window.

Make sure you set the Host to 0.0.0.0 and the port to 8000 if you want to use the debugger etc.