change from throwing a Http404 exception, which I believe will try to render a static 404.html template - and ironically triggers a 500 server error. Just create a HttpResponse and set the status_code to 404.

cms/djangoapps/contentstore/tests/tests.py

@@ -515,6 +515,9 @@ class ContentStoreTest(TestCase):
         # note, we know the link it should be because that's what in the 'full' course in the test data
         self.assertContains(resp, '/c4x/edX/full/asset/handouts_schematic_tutorial.pdf') 
 
+    def test_missing_static_content(self):
+        resp = self.client.get("/c4x/asd/asd/asd/asd")
+        self.assertEqual(resp.status_code, 404)
 
     def test_capa_module(self):
         """Test that a problem treats markdown specially."""

common/djangoapps/contentserver/middleware.py

@@ -21,7 +21,9 @@ class StaticContentServer(object):
                 try:
                     content = contentstore().find(loc)
                 except NotFoundError:
-                    raise Http404
+                    response = HttpResponse()
+                    response.status_code = 404
+                    return response
 
                 # since we fetched it from DB, let's cache it going forward
                 set_cached_content(content)