[vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
I'm curious, is there any way to make an Apache webserver magically notice when an IE browser is about to get an error 404 and not actually send a 404 error code back? (e.g., show whatever error page it would show, but respond as if it was an ok, versus a file not found) The point is to circumvent the stupid built-in IE error response pages which are, in turn, circumventing any _useful_ error page your webserver may be providing. (LUGOD.org, for example, has a rather sophisticated error page which understands typos, knows about some out-of-date URLs, and so forth... It's sad to think so many people might never even see the useful error response because IE is overriding the server's actual HTML) Thx! -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
I think you can fix this on the browser side by going into IE's settings and unchecking show friendly HTTP error messages... or something like that. That's right, MS thinks that showing what caused an error is unfriendly. -- Rod http://www.sunsetsystems.com/ On Wednesday 26 June 2002 11:34 pm, nbs wrote: I'm curious, is there any way to make an Apache webserver magically notice when an IE browser is about to get an error 404 and not actually send a 404 error code back? (e.g., show whatever error page it would show, but respond as if it was an ok, versus a file not found) The point is to circumvent the stupid built-in IE error response pages which are, in turn, circumventing any _useful_ error page your webserver may be providing. (LUGOD.org, for example, has a rather sophisticated error page which understands typos, knows about some out-of-date URLs, and so forth... It's sad to think so many people might never even see the useful error response because IE is overriding the server's actual HTML) Thx! -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 11:49:23PM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: I think you can fix this on the browser side by going into IE's settings and unchecking show friendly HTTP error messages... or something like that. That's right, MS thinks that showing what caused an error is unfriendly. I can't exactly do this from my webserver. :) (That's my point... I'm trying to circumvent Microsoft's idiocy) -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
begin nbs [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 11:49:23PM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: I think you can fix this on the browser side by going into IE's settings and unchecking show friendly HTTP error messages... or something like that. That's right, MS thinks that showing what caused an error is unfriendly. I can't exactly do this from my webserver. :) (That's my point... I'm trying to circumvent Microsoft's idiocy) -bill! there's got to be an IE exploit you can make use of to change the setting ;) pete -- GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E 70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
Can you generate your own error pages in PHP (ie - error.php)? If you can, then you can use PHP to change the header to remove 404 into the standard code (whatever it may be... 100, maybe?) -Mark On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, nbs wrote: On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 11:49:23PM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: I think you can fix this on the browser side by going into IE's settings and unchecking show friendly HTTP error messages... or something like that. That's right, MS thinks that showing what caused an error is unfriendly. I can't exactly do this from my webserver. :) (That's my point... I'm trying to circumvent Microsoft's idiocy) -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech -- Mark K. Kim http://www.cbreak.org/ PGP key available upon request. ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, nbs wrote: I'm curious, is there any way to make an Apache webserver magically notice when an IE browser is about to get an error 404 and not actually send a 404 error code back? (e.g., show whatever error page it would show, but respond as if it was an ok, versus a file not found) The point is to circumvent the stupid built-in IE error response pages which are, in turn, circumventing any _useful_ error page your webserver may be providing. (LUGOD.org, for example, has a rather sophisticated error page which understands typos, knows about some out-of-date URLs, and so forth... It's sad to think so many people might never even see the useful error response because IE is overriding the server's actual HTML) [read, read, read] The problem would probably arise in the very first line of the httpd response, which echoes the HTTP protocol level and specifies the numeric response code. Following that are response headers (mod_asis lets you control these) and a message body (ErrorDocument). I am not seeing anything that lets you lie about the response code, though, which may be for the best. :) --- Jeff NewmillerThe . . Go Live... DCN:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Basics: ##.#. ##.#. Live Go... Live: OO#.. Dead: OO#.. Playing Research Engineer (Solar/BatteriesO.O#. #.O#. with /Software/Embedded Controllers) .OO#. .OO#. rocks...2k --- ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
From Apache's default httpd.conf: # Customizable error response (Apache style) # these come in three flavors # #1) plain text #ErrorDocument 500 The server made a boo boo. # n.b. the () marks it as text, it does not get output # #2) local redirects #ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html # to redirect to local URL /missing.html #ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl # N.B.: You can redirect to a script or a document using server-side-includes. # #3) external redirects #ErrorDocument 402 http://some.other_server.com/subscription_info.html # N.B.: Many of the environment variables associated with the original # request will *not* be available to such a script. Looks like #2 is what you are mostly wanting. -- Rod http://www.sunsetsystems.com/ On Thursday 27 June 2002 12:04 am, nbs wrote: On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 11:49:23PM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: I think you can fix this on the browser side by going into IE's settings and unchecking show friendly HTTP error messages... or something like that. That's right, MS thinks that showing what caused an error is unfriendly. I can't exactly do this from my webserver. :) (That's my point... I'm trying to circumvent Microsoft's idiocy) -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 07:22:28AM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: From Apache's default httpd.conf: # Customizable error response (Apache style) # these come in three flavors # #1) plain text #ErrorDocument 500 The server made a boo boo. # n.b. the () marks it as text, it does not get output # #2) local redirects #ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html # to redirect to local URL /missing.html #ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl # N.B.: You can redirect to a script or a document using server-side-includes. # #3) external redirects #ErrorDocument 402 http://some.other_server.com/subscription_info.html # N.B.: Many of the environment variables associated with the original # request will *not* be available to such a script. Looks like #2 is what you are mostly wanting. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think that will do it. In fact, that's what I already have. Using a non-IE browser, go to, for example: http://www.lugod.org/projects/installfests.shtml and, perhaps, compare it to: http://www.lugod.org/FooBar/ So I've already got 404 errors doing magical PHP stuff. My issue is, they are (rightly) being transmitted as 404 responses. IE notices this, ignores any of the actual HTML content provided by the webserver (e.g., in the first page up there, the note saying You're probably looking for the installfest page: _link_), and just plops its crap onto the screen. I want Apache to say Ok, this is a 404... BUT... the requester is using Internet Explorer, so I'll still show them the 404 error page Bill so tirelessly created, BUT I'll just say it's an okeydokey response, not a 404. I think someone's suggestion to rewrite headers using PHP might do the trick for me. If so, I'll post my solution. Now to track down a Windows box with IE to test with ;) -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
On Thu, 27 Jun 2002, nbs wrote: [...] So I've already got 404 errors doing magical PHP stuff. My issue is, they are (rightly) being transmitted as 404 responses. IE notices this, ignores any of the actual HTML content provided by the webserver (e.g., in the first page up there, the note saying You're probably looking for the installfest page: _link_), and just plops its crap onto the screen. [...] Now to track down a Windows box with IE to test with ;) First get the response code straightened out: $ telnet www.lugod.org 80 Trying 168.150.251.11... Connected to dcn251-11.dcn.davis.ca.us. Escape character is '^]'. GET /nonexistent HTTP/1.0 HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found -* this is the response code Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 08:06:35 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.4 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.1.1 mod_perl/1.24_01 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Cache: MISS from bala.omsoft.com Connection: close !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC -//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN HTMLHEAD TITLE404 Not Found/TITLE /HEADBODY H1Not Found/H1 The requested URL /nonexistent was not found on this server.P HR ADDRESSApache/1.3.20 Server at www.livepenguin.com Port 80/ADDRESS /BODY/HTML Connection closed by foreign host. $ ... then worry about finding IE to test with. --- Jeff NewmillerThe . . Go Live... DCN:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Basics: ##.#. ##.#. Live Go... Live: OO#.. Dead: OO#.. Playing Research Engineer (Solar/BatteriesO.O#. #.O#. with /Software/Embedded Controllers) .OO#. .OO#. rocks...2k --- ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 09:59:54AM -0700, Jeff Newmiller wrote: Now to track down a Windows box with IE to test with ;) First get the response code straightened out: snip HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found -* this is the response code snip ... then worry about finding IE to test with. Well _duh_. I haven't _done_ anything yet. :^) :^P -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
Well, I just tried these two URLs on IE 5.0 after booting up Win98 on my wife's (dual boot) machine. It seems to display your stuff OK, regardless of the friendly messages setting. -- Rod http://www.sunsetsystems.com/ On Thursday 27 June 2002 09:29 am, nbs wrote: On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 07:22:28AM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: From Apache's default httpd.conf: # Customizable error response (Apache style) # these come in three flavors # #1) plain text #ErrorDocument 500 The server made a boo boo. # n.b. the () marks it as text, it does not get output # #2) local redirects #ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html # to redirect to local URL /missing.html #ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl # N.B.: You can redirect to a script or a document using server-side-includes. # #3) external redirects #ErrorDocument 402 http://some.other_server.com/subscription_info.html # N.B.: Many of the environment variables associated with the original # request will *not* be available to such a script. Looks like #2 is what you are mostly wanting. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think that will do it. In fact, that's what I already have. Using a non-IE browser, go to, for example: http://www.lugod.org/projects/installfests.shtml and, perhaps, compare it to: http://www.lugod.org/FooBar/ So I've already got 404 errors doing magical PHP stuff. My issue is, they are (rightly) being transmitted as 404 responses. IE notices this, ignores any of the actual HTML content provided by the webserver (e.g., in the first page up there, the note saying You're probably looking for the installfest page: _link_), and just plops its crap onto the screen. I want Apache to say Ok, this is a 404... BUT... the requester is using Internet Explorer, so I'll still show them the 404 error page Bill so tirelessly created, BUT I'll just say it's an okeydokey response, not a 404. I think someone's suggestion to rewrite headers using PHP might do the trick for me. If so, I'll post my solution. Now to track down a Windows box with IE to test with ;) -bill! ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
Re: [vox-tech] Apache, IE, error 404
On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 10:17:38AM -0700, Rod Roark wrote: Well, I just tried these two URLs on IE 5.0 after booting up Win98 on my wife's (dual boot) machine. It seems to display your stuff OK, regardless of the friendly messages setting. Yes, same here for us, on two different boxen. It _seems_ that there's already something magical about Apache's config. on LUGOD.org, _OR_ that IE actually looks at the length/complexity/keywords within the 404 response HTML to decide whether it's already friendly enough Compare: http://www.lugod.org/tototo with the setting on and off (both cases, you see my nice PHP 404 error) to: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tototo with the setting on and off (on, you see the generic IE friendly 404, off, you see my simply 404.shtml page) Whatever. This is why I don't like thinking about IE. :) -bill! (discovered that a server-erroring VBScript in IIS still sends a 200 OK response, since I guess they assume all VB coders are too stewpid to disable the 'friendly error' setting. Seriously... I read this at microsoft.com just now after doing a Google search ;) ) ___ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
