Apache - custom 404 error page returns a 302 error code

categories:

• Apache
• Linux

First let’s look what the docs says about setting up a custom error page : http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/en/custom-error.html

If you set up your custom 404 error page pointing to a full URL like :

ErrorDocument 404 http://blog.wains.be/404/index.html

You would get an error 302 code.

$ curl -I http://blog.wains.be/mlfkgldk HTTP/1.1 302 Found Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:20:40 GMT Server: Apache Location: http://blog.wains.be/404/index.html Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

If you want to get the real deal :

ErrorDocument 404 /404/index.html

Then…

$ curl -I http://blog.wains.be/mlfkgldk HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:21:16 GMT Server: Apache Last-Modified: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:19:53 GMT ETag: "594022-307-8bd8a040" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 775 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Useful link :

HTTP/1.1 status code definitions available here