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-
- <manualpage metafile="custom-error.xml.meta">
-
- <title>Custom Error Responses</title>
-
- <summary>
- <p>Additional functionality allows webmasters to configure the response
- of Apache to some error or problem.</p>
-
- <p>Customizable responses can be defined to be activated in the event of
- a server detected error or problem.</p>
-
- <p>If a script crashes and produces a "500 Server Error" response,
- then this response can be replaced with either some friendlier text or by
- a redirection to another URL (local or external).</p>
- </summary>
-
- <section id="behavior">
- <title>Behavior</title>
-
- <section>
- <title>Old Behavior</title>
-
- <p>NCSA httpd 1.3 would return some boring old error/problem message
- which would often be meaningless to the user, and would provide no
- means of logging the symptoms which caused it.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section>
- <title>New Behavior</title>
-
- <p>The server can be asked to:</p>
-
- <ol>
- <li>Display some other text, instead of the NCSA hard coded
- messages, or</li>
-
- <li>redirect to a local URL, or</li>
-
- <li>redirect to an external URL.</li>
- </ol>
-
- <p>Redirecting to another URL can be useful, but only if some
- information can be passed which can then be used to explain and/or log
- the error/problem more clearly.</p>
-
- <p>To achieve this, Apache will define new CGI-like environment
- variables:</p>
-
- <example>
- REDIRECT_HTTP_ACCEPT=*/*, image/gif, image/x-xbitmap,
- image/jpeg<br />
- REDIRECT_HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/1.1b2 (X11; I; HP-UX A.09.05
- 9000/712)<br />
- REDIRECT_PATH=.:/bin:/usr/local/bin:/etc<br />
- REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING=<br />
- REDIRECT_REMOTE_ADDR=121.345.78.123<br />
- REDIRECT_REMOTE_HOST=ooh.ahhh.com<br />
- REDIRECT_SERVER_NAME=crash.bang.edu<br />
- REDIRECT_SERVER_PORT=80<br />
- REDIRECT_SERVER_SOFTWARE=Apache/0.8.15<br />
- REDIRECT_URL=/cgi-bin/buggy.pl
- </example>
-
- <p>Note the <code>REDIRECT_</code> prefix.</p>
-
- <p>At least <code>REDIRECT_URL</code> and
- <code>REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING</code> will be passed to the
- new URL (assuming it's a cgi-script or a cgi-include). The
- other variables will exist only if they existed prior to
- the error/problem. <strong>None</strong> of these will be
- set if your <directive module="core">ErrorDocument</directive> is an
- <em>external</em> redirect (anything starting with a
- scheme name like <code>http:</code>, even if it refers to the same host
- as the server).</p>
- </section>
- </section>
-
- <section id="configuration">
- <title>Configuration</title>
-
- <p>Use of <directive module="core">ErrorDocument</directive> is enabled
- for .htaccess files when the
- <directive module="core">AllowOverride</directive> is set accordingly.</p>
-
- <p>Here are some examples...</p>
-
- <example>
- ErrorDocument 500 /cgi-bin/crash-recover <br />
- ErrorDocument 500 "Sorry, our script crashed. Oh dear" <br />
- ErrorDocument 500 http://xxx/ <br />
- ErrorDocument 404 /Lame_excuses/not_found.html <br />
- ErrorDocument 401 /Subscription/how_to_subscribe.html
- </example>
-
- <p>The syntax is,</p>
-
- <example>
- ErrorDocument <3-digit-code> <action>
- </example>
-
- <p>where the action can be,</p>
-
- <ol>
- <li>Text to be displayed. Prefix the text with a quote
- ("). Whatever follows the quote is displayed. <em>Note:
- the (") prefix isn't displayed.</em></li>
-
- <li>An external URL to redirect to.</li>
-
- <li>A local URL to redirect to.</li>
- </ol>
- </section>
-
- <section id="custom">
- <title>Custom Error Responses and Redirects</title>
-
- <p>Apache's behavior to redirected URLs has been modified so
- that additional environment variables are available to a
- script/server-include.</p>
-
- <section>
- <title>Old behavior</title>
-
- <p>Standard CGI vars were made available to a script which
- has been redirected to. No indication of where the
- redirection came from was provided.</p>
- </section>
-
- <section>
- <title>New behavior</title>
-
- <p>A new batch of environment variables will be initialized
- for use by a script which has been redirected to. Each new
- variable will have the prefix <code>REDIRECT_</code>.
- <code>REDIRECT_</code> environment variables are created from
- the CGI environment variables which existed prior to the
- redirect, they are renamed with a <code>REDIRECT_</code>
- prefix, <em>i.e.</em>, <code>HTTP_USER_AGENT</code> becomes
- <code>REDIRECT_HTTP_USER_AGENT</code>. In addition to these
- new variables, Apache will define <code>REDIRECT_URL</code>
- and <code>REDIRECT_STATUS</code> to help the script trace its
- origin. Both the original URL and the URL being redirected to
- can be logged in the access log.</p>
-
- <p>If the ErrorDocument specifies a local redirect to a CGI
- script, the script should include a "<code>Status:</code>"
- header field in its output in order to ensure the propagation
- all the way back to the client of the error condition that
- caused it to be invoked. For instance, a Perl ErrorDocument
- script might include the following:</p>
-
- <example>
- ... <br />
- print "Content-type: text/html\n"; <br />
- printf "Status: %s Condition Intercepted\n", $ENV{"REDIRECT_STATUS"}; <br />
- ...
- </example>
-
- <p>If the script is dedicated to handling a particular error
- condition, such as <code>404 Not Found</code>, it can
- use the specific code and error text instead.</p>
-
- <p>Note that the script <em>must</em> emit an appropriate
- <code>Status:</code> header (such as <code>302 Found</code>), if the
- response contains a <code>Location:</code> header (in order to issue a
- client side redirect). Otherwise the <code>Location:</code> header may
- have no effect.</p>
- </section>
- </section>
- </manualpage>
-