Nginx doesn't serve static

Question

I'm running Django on Ubuntu Server 9.04.

Django works well, but nginx doesn't return static files - always 404.

Here's the config:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name localhost;

    #site_media - folder in uri for static files
    location /static  {
        root /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files;
        autoindex on;
    }

    #location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|js|mov) {
    #   root /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files;
    #   access_log off;
    #   expires 30d;
    #}

    location / {
        root html;
        index index.html index.htm;
        # host and port to fastcgi server
        #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8080;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/home/user/www/oil/oil_database/oil.sock;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
        fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
        fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
        fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
        fastcgi_pass_header Authorization;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
    }

    access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access_log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.error_log;
}

Nginx version is 0.6.35.

All directories exist and made 777 (debugging paranoia). The commented-out block doesn't help when I uncomment it.

Answer 1

How is your directory setup? Do you have a folder static in /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files? In that case, the directive should look like this (note the trailing slash in /static/):

location /static/  {
    autoindex    on;
    root /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files;
}

If you want to map the path /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files to the URL /static/, you have to either

• rename the folder static_files to static and use this directive:

  location /static/  {
      autoindex    on;
      root /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/;
  }
  

• use an alias:

  location /static/  {
      autoindex    on;
      alias /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files/;
  }
  

See the documentation on the root and alias directives.

Answer 2

I have a similar config for my Django sites, but I think you want to use alias instead of root for your media. For example:

location /static {
    alias /home/user/www/oil/oil_database/static_files;
}