Setting DEBUG False causes 500 Error

Question

Once I change the DEBUG   False  my site will generate 500  using wsgi  amp  manage py runserver   and there is no error info in Apache error log and it will run normally when I change debug to True    I m using Django 1 5  amp  Python 2 7 3 here is Apache access log and without any log in apache error log  www beta800 net 80 222 247 56 11 - -  28 Feb 2013 13 42 28  0800   GET   HTTP 1 1  500 257  -   Mozilla 5 0  Windows NT 6 2  WOW64  AppleWebKit 537 22  KHTML  like Gecko  Chrome 25 0 1364 97 Safari 537 22  www beta800 net 80 222 247 56 11 - -  28 Feb 2013 13 42 28  0800   GET  favicon ico HTTP 1 1  500 257  -   Mozilla 5 0  Windows NT 6 2  WOW64  AppleWebKit 537 22  KHTML  like Gecko  Chrome 25 0 1364 97 Safari 537 22  www beta800 net 80 222 247 56 11 - -  28 Feb 2013 13 42 28  0800   GET  favicon ico HTTP 1 1  500 257  -   Mozilla 5 0  Windows NT 6 2  WOW64  AppleWebKit 537 22  KHTML  like Gecko  Chrome 25 0 1364 97 Safari 537 22    Here is my settings file   import os path     DEBUG   False   TEMPLATE DEBUG   DEBUG  HERE   os path dirname   file    ADMINS           admin    xyzadmin qq com       MANAGERS   ADMINS  DATABASES          default              ENGINE    django db backends mysql     Add  postgresql psycopg2    mysql    sqlite3  or  oracle            NAME    zdm                          Or path to database file if using sqlite3           USER    root                          Not used with sqlite3           PASSWORD    passwd                      Not used with sqlite3           HOST                              Set to empty string for localhost  Not used with sqlite3           PORT                              Set to empty string for default  Not used with sqlite3             Local time zone for this installation  Choices can be found here    http   en wikipedia org wiki List of tz zones by name   although not all choices may be available on all operating systems    In a Windows environment this must be set to your system time zone  TIME ZONE    America Chicago     Language code for this installation  All choices can be found here    http   www i18nguy com unicode language-identifiers html LANGUAGE CODE    en-us   SITE ID   1    If you set this to False  Django will make some optimizations so as not   to load the internationalization machinery  USE I18N   True    If you set this to False  Django will not format dates  numbers and   calendars according to the current locale  USE L10N   True    If you set this to False  Django will not use timezone-aware datetimes  USE TZ   True    Absolute filesystem path to the directory that will hold user-uploaded files    Example    home media media lawrence com media   MEDIA ROOT         URL that handles the media served from MEDIA ROOT  Make sure to use a   trailing slash    Examples   http   media lawrence com media     http   example com media   MEDIA URL         Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to    Don t put anything in this directory yourself  store your static files   in apps   static   subdirectories and in STATICFILES DIRS    Example    home media media lawrence com static    STATIC ROOT   os path join HERE   static   replace              URL prefix for static files    Example   http   media lawrence com static   STATIC URL     static    STATIC ROOT   os path join HERE   static   replace           S  os path join HERE   static   replace              Additional locations of static files STATICFILES DIRS           Put strings here  like   home html static  or  C  www django static         Always use forward slashes  even on Windows        Don t forget to use absolute paths  not relative paths        home zdm static        List of finder classes that know how to find static files in   various locations  STATICFILES FINDERS          django contrib staticfiles finders FileSystemFinder        django contrib staticfiles finders AppDirectoriesFinder         django contrib staticfiles finders DefaultStorageFinder        Make this unique  and don t share it with anybody  SECRET KEY    9a7  gp8ojyk-  d  whuw 0rml r uaie4ur  do9zz 6 hy0     List of callables that know how to import templates from various sources  TEMPLATE LOADERS          django template loaders filesystem Loader        django template loaders app directories Loader          django template loaders eggs Loader      MIDDLEWARE CLASSES          django middleware common CommonMiddleware        django contrib sessions middleware SessionMiddleware        django middleware csrf CsrfViewMiddleware        django contrib auth middleware AuthenticationMiddleware        django contrib messages middleware MessageMiddleware         Uncomment the next line for simple clickjacking protection         django middleware clickjacking XFrameOptionsMiddleware      ROOT URLCONF    zdm urls     Python dotted path to the WSGI application used by Django s runserver  WSGI APPLICATION    zdm wsgi application   TEMPLATE DIRS           Put strings here  like   home html django templates  or  C  www django templates         Always use forward slashes  even on Windows        Don t forget to use absolute paths  not relative paths        home zdm templates      INSTALLED APPS          django contrib auth        django contrib contenttypes        django contrib sessions        django contrib sites        django contrib messages        django contrib staticfiles         Uncomment the next line to enable the admin       django contrib admin         Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation         django contrib admindocs        zdm        portal        admin        tagging

User · Answer

Its mid 2019 and I faced this error after a few years of developing with Django. Baffled me for an entire night! It wasn't allowed host (which should throw a 400), everything else checked out, finally did some error logging only to discover that some missing / or messed up static files manifest (after collectstatic) were screwing with the setup. Long story short, for those who are stumped AND SO HAPPEN ARE USING WHITENOISE OR THE DJANGO STATICFILE BACKEND WITH CACHE (manifest static files) , maybe this is for you.

Make sure you setup everything (as I did for the whitenoise backend...django backends read on nonetheless) http://whitenoise.evans.io/en/stable/django.html
If error code 500 still shoots you down, take note on your settings.STATICFILES_STORAGE.

Set it to either (for whitenoise backend with compression)

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedStaticFilesStorage'

or (leave as django default)

STATICFILES_STORAGE = django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.StaticFilesStorage

All in all, THE PROBLEM seemed to come from the fact that this whitenoise cache + compression backend -->

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage'

or the django's own caching backend -->

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'django.contrib.staticfiles.storage.ManifestStaticFilesStorage'

...didnt quite work well for me, since my css was referencing some other sources which may be mixed up during collectstatic / backend caching. This issue is also potentially highlighted in http://whitenoise.evans.io/en/stable/django.html#storage-troubleshoot

User · Answer

You must also check your URLs all over the place  When the DEBUG is set to False  all URLs without trailing   are treated as a bug  unlike when you have DEBUG   True  in which case Django will append   everywhere it is missing  So  in short  make sure all links end with a slash EVERYWHERE

User · Answer

You might want to run python manage py collectstatic after you set DEBUG   False and ALLOWED HOSTS     127 0 0 1   in settings py  After these two steps my web application ran well in my local server even with DEBUG False mode    BTW I have these settings in settings py    MIDDLEWARE          django middleware security SecurityMiddleware        whitenoise middleware WhiteNoiseMiddleware     what i added      django middleware common CommonMiddleware     and so on       STATICFILES STORAGE    whitenoise storage CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage    I assume maybe whitenoise setting has something to do with collectstatic command

User · Answer

I know this post is quite old but it s still perfectly relevant today   For what it s worth - I was getting a 500 with DEBUG   False for all pages on my site    I got no traceback when in debug    I had to go through every static link in my templates within my site and found one    forward slash  in front of my image source     static         This caused the 500 error in DEBUG   False but worked perfectly fine in Debug   True with no errors  Very annoying  Be warned  Many hours of time wasted due to a forward slash

User · Answer

ALLOWED HOSTS is NOT the only issue  for me I had to make a 404 html and put it in the base level of my templates  not app level  - Also  you can make a 404 view and add a 404handler url but I think thats optional  404 html fixed it  in mainproject urls  handler404    app views custom 404    in app views  def custom 404 request       return render request   404 html       status 404    then make a templates 404 html template  got this from another S O post that I cannot find it  EDIT  also  I get 500 errors when I serve assets with whitenoise  Could not figure that out for the life of me  error was ValueError from whitenoise not being able to find an asset that I also could not find  had to go with default django serving for now

User · Answer

I have a hilarious story for all  After reaching this page I said  Eureka  I m saved  That MUST be my problem   So I inserted the required ALLOWED HOSTS list in setting py and    nothing  Same old 500 error  And no  it wasn t for lack of a 404 html file   So for 2 days I busied myself with wild theories  such as that it had something to do with serving static files  understand that I am a noob and noobs don t know what they re doing    So what was it  It is now Mr  Moderator that we come to a useful tip  Whereas my development Django is version 1 5 something  my production server version is 1 5 something 1    or maybe plus 2  Whatever  And so after I added the ALLOWED HOSTS to the desktop version of settings py  which lacked what hwjp requested--- a  default value in settings py  perhaps with an explanatory comment --- I did the same on the production server with the proper domain for it   But I failed to notice that on the production server with the later version of Django there WAS a default value in settings py with an explanatory comment  It was well below where I made my entry  out of sight on the monitor  And of course the list was empty  Hence my waste of time

User · Answer

A bit late to the party  and off course there could be a legion of issues but I ve had a similar issue and it turned out that I had       special characters inside my html remark      lt  --  lt img src     static  my app myexample jpg      alt  My image   gt  -- gt

User · Answer

This is old and my problem ended up being related to the problem but not for the OP but my solution is for anyone else who tried the above to no avail    I had a setting in a modified version of Django to minify CSS and JS files that only ran when DEBUG was off  My server did not have the CSS minifier installed and threw the error  If you are using Django-Mako-Plus  this might be your issue

User · Answer

I found yet another cause of the 500 error when DEBUG False   I use the Django compressor utility and our front-end engineer added references to font files inside a compress css block in a Django template   Like this      compress css         lt link href     static  css bootstrap css      rel  stylesheet  gt       lt link href     static  css bootstrap-spinedit css      rel  stylesheet  gt       lt link href     static  djangular css styles css      rel  stylesheet  gt       lt link href     static  fonts fontawesome-webfont ttf      rel  stylesheet  gt     endcompress      The solution was to move the link to the ttf file below the endcompress line

User · Answer

I know that this is a super old question  but maybe I could help some one else   If you are having a 500 error after setting DEBUG False  you can always run the manage py runserver in the command line to see any errors that wont appear in any web error logs

User · Answer

I faced the same problem when I did DEBUG   FALSE  Here is a consolidated solution as scattered in answers above and other posts   By default  in settings py we have ALLOWED HOSTS        Here are possible changes you will have to make in ALLOWED HOSTS value as per scenario to get rid of the error   1  Your domain name   ALLOWED HOSTS     www example com     Your domain name here   2  Your deployed server IP if you don t have domain name yet  which was my case and worked like a charm    ALLOWED HOSTS     123 123 198 123     Enter your IP here   3  If you are testing on local server  you can edit your settings py or settings local py as   ALLOWED HOSTS     localhost    127 0 0 1     4  You can also provide     in the ALLOWED HOSTS value but its not recommended in the production environment due to security reasons    ALLOWED HOSTS           Not recommended in production environment   I have also posted a detailed solution on my blog which you may want to refer

User · Answer

Django 1 5 introduced the allowed hosts setting that is required for security reasons  A settings file created with Django 1 5 has this new section which you need to add     Hosts domain names that are valid for this site  required if DEBUG is False   See https   docs djangoproject com en 1 9 ref settings  allowed-hosts ALLOWED HOSTS        Add your host here like   www beta800 net   or       for a quick test  but don t use       for production

User · Answer

I had one view that threw a 500 error in debug false but worked in debug true  For anyone who is getting this kind of thing and Allowed Hosts is not the problem  I fixed my view by updating a template s static tag that was pointing to the wrong location    So I d suggest just checking links and tags are airtight in any templates used  maybe certain things slip through the net in debug but give errors in production

User · Answer

For what it s worth - I was getting a 500 with DEBUG   False on some pages only  Tracing back the exception with pdb revealed a missing asset  I suspect the    static        template tag was the culprit for the 500

User · Answer

I think it could also be the http server settings  Mine is still broken and had ALLOWED HOSTS the entire time  I can access it locally  i use gunicorn   but not via the domain name when DEBUG False  when I try using the domain name it then gives me the error  so makes me think its a nginx related issue   Here is my conf file for nginx   server       listen   80      server name localhost myproject ca www myproject ca      root  var web myproject deli cms         serve directly - analogous for static staticfiles     location  media              if asset versioning is used         if   query string                expires max                      location  admin media              this changes depending on your python version         root  var web myproject lib python2 6 site-packages django contrib            location  static        alias  var web myproject deli cms static root              location             proxy pass header Server          proxy set header Host  http host          proxy redirect off          proxy set header X-Real-IP  remote addr          proxy set header X-Scheme  scheme          proxy connect timeout 10          proxy read timeout 10          proxy pass http   localhost 8000               what to serve if upstream is not available or crashes     error page 500 502 503 504  media 50x html

User · Answer

I have the similar issue  in my case it was caused by having a Commented script inside the body tag     lt  -- lt script gt    lt  script gt -- gt

User · Answer

I started to get the 500 for debug False in the form of   django urls exceptions NoReverseMatch  Reverse for  home  not found  or    django urls exceptions NoReverseMatch  Reverse for  about  not found    when raising django core exceptions ValidationError instead of raising rest framework serializers ValidationError  To be fair  it was already raising a 500 before  but as a ValidationError  with debug False  this changed into the NoReverseMatch

User · Answer

Right  in Django 1 5 if DEBUG   False  configure ALLOWED HOSTS  adding domains without the port number  example    ALLOWED HOSTS     localhost

User · Answer

I know this is late but I ended up here with a search for my error 500 with DEBUG False  in my case it did turn out to be the ALLOWED HOSTS but I was using os environ get  variable   to populate the hosts  I did not notice this until I enabled logging  you can log all errors to file with the below and it will log even when DEBUG False     settings py LOGGING          version   1       disable existing loggers   False       formatters              verbose                  format        asctime s    levelname s    name s   lineno s    message s                datefmt      d  b  Y  H  M  S                      simple                  format      levelname s   message s                         handlers              file                  level    DEBUG                class    logging FileHandler                filename    mysite log                formatter    verbose                         loggers              django                  handlers    file                 propagate   True               level   DEBUG                       MYAPP                  handlers     file                 level    DEBUG

User · Answer

One small thing to note  If the array has None in it  then all the subsequent allowed hosts are ignored   ALLOWED HOSTS          localhost       None       example com     First DNS alias  set up in the app        www example com     Second DNS alias  set up in the app      Django version 1 8 4

User · Answer

Complementing the main answer It is annoying to change the ALLOWED HOSTS and DEBUG global constants in settings py when switching between development and production  I am using this code to set these setting automatically   import socket  if socket gethostname       server name       DEBUG   False     ALLOWED HOSTS      your domain name com            else      DEBUG   True     ALLOWED HOSTS     localhost    127 0 0 1              If you use macOS you could write a more generic code   if socket gethostname   endswith   local      True in your local computer     DEBUG   True     ALLOWED HOSTS     localhost    127 0 0 1    else

User · Answer

I encountered the same issue just recently in Django 2 0  I was able to figure out the problem by setting DEBUG PROPAGATE EXCEPTIONS   True  See here  https   docs djangoproject com en 2 0 ref settings  debug-propagate-exceptions  In my case  the error was ValueError  Missing staticfiles manifest entry for  admin css base css   I fixed that by locally running python manage py collectstatic

User · Answer

I know this is an old question  but I was also getting a 500 error when DEBUG False  After several hours  I realized I had forgot to end some of the links in my base html with a trailing slash

User · Answer

Ok after trying soo many things  the correct solution is       you need to set DEBUG    FALSE  not False or FALSE  but  FALSE  with

User · Answer

I had a problem similar to this and I will report how I solved mine because it could be that someone is also experiencing the same   In my case  the error was caused because the server was not finding some static files from the homepage   So make sure the error only occurs in the index or occurs on another page  If the problem is only occurring in the index very probably you need to check the static files  I recommend opening the Chrome preview console and checking for any errors   In my case  the server couldn t find favicon ico and two other CSS   To fix this I passed python manage py collectstatic and it worked

User · Answer

this maybe help someone else  in my case the problem with the missing favicon

User · Answer

I was searching and testing more about this issue and I realized that static files directories specified in settings py can be a cause of this  so fist  we need to run this command  python manage py collectstatic   in settings py  the code should look something like this   STATIC URL     static    STATICFILES DIRS         os path join BASE DIR   static       STATIC ROOT   os path join BASE DIR   staticfiles

User · Answer

I ran into this issue  Turns out I was including in the template  using the static template tag  a file that did not exist anymore  A look in the logs showed me the problem   I guess this is just one of many possible reasons for this kind of error    Moral of the story  always log errors and always check logs

User · Answer

Thanks to  squarebear  in the log file  I found the error  ValueError  The file  myapp styles css  could not be found with  lt whitenoise storage CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage     gt      I had a few problems in my django app  I removed the line  STATICFILES STORAGE    whitenoise django GzipManifestStaticFilesStorage  which I found from the heroku s documentation    I also had to add extra directory  thanks to another SO answer  static in the root of django application as myapp static even though I wasn t using it  Then running the command python manage py collectstatic before running the server solved the problem  Finally  it started working fine

User · Answer

If you want to allow for all hosts   Use ALLOWED HOSTS           instead of  ALLOWED HOSTS

User · Answer

In my case  reading docs of third party apps properly saved me    The culprit  django compressor  I had      load compress       compress css         css files linked here       endcompress      DEBUG   True always gave me 500  To fix it  I needed a line in my settings to get it running  COMPRESS ENABLED   os environ get  COMPRESS ENABLED   False

[django] Setting DEBUG = False causes 500 Error

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