title: Is Django lying to me?! render_to_response function returns TemplateDoesNotExist when the file does indeed exist
body: <p>OK.  I have read many other accounts of this happening, and they were always solved when the question asker correctly modified their TEMPLATE_DIRS setting.  None of these suggestions have worked for me.  The strange thing is that the template loads when using the Django web server, but errors out when using mod_wsgi.  I think django is maybe throwing an incorrect exception, because the TemplateDoesNotExist error simply can not apply given my settings.</p>
  
  <p>My code:</p>
  
  <p>my app/views/view.py (yes, i have my views in a subfolder)</p>
  
  <pre><code>  8 def index(request):
    9     return render_to_response('pages/home/base_home.html')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is my settings.py located at root (standard location)</p>
  
  <pre><code>106 TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
  107     # Put strings here, like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates".
  108     # Always use forward slashes, even on Windows.
  109     # Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths.
  110     "/home/foobar/templates",
  111 )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And finally, here is my view located at /home/foobar/templates/pages/home/</p>
  
  <pre><code>  1 {% extends 'base.html' %}
    2 
    3 {% block navigation %}
    4     {% include 'modules/navigation/navigation.html' %}
    5 {% endblock %}
    6 
    7 {% block slideshow %}
    8     {% include 'modules/slideshow/slideshow.html' %}
    9 {% endblock %}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Also, here is an ls -l proving that the file does exist</p>
  
  <pre><code>foo@bar:~$ ls -l templates/pages/home/
  total 12
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 foo foo 205 2011-06-05 12:37 base_home.html
  foo@bar:~$ 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is the postmortem report that Django gives me:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Template-loader postmortem
  
  Django tried loading these templates, in this order:
  Using loader django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader:
  /home/foobar/templates/pages/home/base_home.html (File does not exist)
  Using loader django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader:
  /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/contrib/admin/templates/pages/home/base_home.html (File does not exist)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><em>edit</em></p>
  
  <p>Here is my wsgi file</p>
  
  <pre><code>  3 import os
    4 import sys
    5 
    6 path = '/media/PENDRIVE/Projects/'
    7 if path not in sys.path:
    8     sys.path.append(path)
    9     
   10 os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'myproject.settings'
   11 
   12 import django.core.handlers.wsgi
   13 application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()
   14 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thank you for any insight, as I am baffled and stuck!</p>