Graphite as django web application returns 404 for all static resources

DISCLAIMER: I know there's lots of questions here for 404 on static resources in django, but unfortunately none of it helps :(

Problem: as stated in title, I got 404 response for all static resources in graphite web app.

Here are some relevant config parts:

app_settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
  'graphite.metrics',
  'graphite.render',
  'graphite.browser',
  'graphite.composer',
  'graphite.account',
  'graphite.dashboard',
  'graphite.whitelist',
  'graphite.events',
  'graphite.url_shortener',
  'django.contrib.auth',
  'django.contrib.sessions',
  'django.contrib.admin',
  'django.contrib.contenttypes',
  'django.contrib.staticfiles',
  'tagging',
)

settings.py:

# Defaults for these are set after local_settings is imported
STATIC_ROOT = ''
STATIC_URL = ''

...

## Load our local_settings
try:
  from graphite.local_settings import *  # noqa
except ImportError:
  print >> sys.stderr, "Could not import graphite.local_settings, using defaults!"

...

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    join(WEBAPP_DIR, 'content'),
    "/opt/graphite/webapp/content/",
)

if not STATIC_ROOT:
  STATIC_ROOT = join(GRAPHITE_ROOT, 'static')

...

# Handle URL prefix in static files handling
if URL_PREFIX and not STATIC_URL.startswith(URL_PREFIX):
    STATIC_URL = '/{0}{1}'.format(URL_PREFIX.strip('/'), STATIC_URL)

local_settings.py:

STATIC_ROOT = '/opt/graphite/webapp/content/'
STATIC_URL = '/content/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = (

#    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static"),
#    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "content"),
    "/opt/graphite/webapp/content/",

)  

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
)

...

from graphite.app_settings import *

Django version:

Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Jan 22 2014, 09:42:36) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import django
>>> django.VERSION
(1, 4, 14, 'final', 0)

Directories layout:

/opt/graphite/
    /webapp/
        /graphite/
        /content/ <-- static files I want placed right here

/opt/graphite is actually a symlink to another folder, if that matters.

I got 404 errors for the urls like this:

http://my_host:9999/content/js/...
http://my_host:9999/content/css/...

I have also tried collectstatic command with no success:

[root@myserver graphite]# pwd
/opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
[root@myserver graphite]# python manage.py collectstatic
Could not import graphite.local_settings, using defaults!
Unknown command: 'collectstatic'
Type 'manage.py help' for usage.
[root@myserver graphite]# django-admin collectstatic --noinput --settings=graphite.settings
Unknown command: 'collectstatic'
Type 'django-admin help' for usage.
[root@myserver graphite]# python manage.py collectstatic --noinput --settings=graphite.settings
Unknown command: 'collectstatic'
Type 'manage.py help' for usage.

Django is started in the following way:

/usr/bin/django-admin runserver --pythonpath /opt/graphite/webapp --settings graphite.settings 0.0.0.0:9999 &

Any help will be high appreciated.

UPD: I have upgraded django to 1.5 and changed some paths:

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "content"),
) 

STATIC_ROOT = ''
STATIC_URL = 'static'

After that, collectstatic command finally worked and copied all files to /opt/graphite/static dir. I decided to try DEBUG = True and a miracle happened - finally I got all static files I wanted, but when I reverted it to default settings, 404 again.

Solution

As I wrote in the question, setting DEBUG = True actually solves the problem. That is because django doesn't handle static files if started in dev mode: Why does DEBUG=False setting make my django Static Files Access fail?

So, the solution for the dev mode server includes:

Upgrade django to 1.5;
Set STATIC_ROOT to '' (works for Graphite);
Add real OS filesystem path to static files to STATICFILES_DIRS;
Run python manage.py collectstatic --pythonpath=/opt/graphite/webapp