I need help with error pages.

I would like to use some of the techniques that Jason Hunter suggests for Error 
Handling in Java Servlet Programming, 2nd Edition, Chapter 5, especially error pages. 
Unfortunately, Hunter gives only some of the information you need to do this so I'm 
hoping someone who reads this list will have figured out the rest of what is required.

Many of the errors my servlet(s) will generate will be for status_code 500 (Internal 
Server Error) so I would like to create my own error page for code 500. This leads me 
to my first question:
1. Where can I find more information on the syntax of the <location> tag in the 
web.xml file? Specifically, if I imitate Hunter's code and set my location to 
/500.html, where does the actual 500.html file need to be? I am using JBuilder6 and 
Tomcat 4.0. Every place I've tried putting my 500.html file leads to "document not 
found" error.

I really like the technique described on p. 150 in the sample servlet called 
ErrorDisplay.
2. If I wrote my own version of ErrorDisplay, exactly where would I need to put the 
code and what path would I need in the <location> tag of web.xml?

3. How would I invoke ErrorDisplay? I'm not clear on whether I can call it directly 
from my servlet when I encounter an error or will ErrorDisplay be invoked 
"automagically" via the <error-code> and <location> tags in web.xml? If the latter is 
true, can someone explain what exact event triggers the invoking of the error page so 
that I can make sure my servlet does exactly the right thing to trigger the error page?

4. How would I revise ErrorDisplay to pass the error message of my choice to 
ErrorDisplay? I don't want the message to be a generic "Internal Server Error", I want 
it to be specific about what happened. I have already written code that produces a 
variety of error messages so I just need to know how to pass a specific error message 
to a revised ErrorDisplay.

5. Does anyone have a short example that does all or most of what I've described in 
this note? If yes, I'd love to see it.

Henry

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