nginx: how to always return a custom 404 page for the default host

Question

I have nginx 0.8.53 configured with some virtual hosts which work as desired. However, due to nginx's "best match" on virtual hosts, I need to add a default host to catch all requests that aren't for a specific virtual host. I would like the default host to return a custom 404 page that I created instead of the default nginx 404 page.

I assumed I needed something like:

# The default server: server {     listen       80 default_server;     server_name  everythingelse;      # Everything is a 404     location / {         return 404;     }     error_page 404 /opt/local/html/404.html; } 

But this still returns the default nginx 404 page. It seems the return 404 ignores the error_page config.

Answer 1

Here what I have in my conf to make it work:

# The default server. server {   listen       80 default_server;   server_name  everythingelse;    error_page 404 /404.html;    # Everything is a 404   location / {     return 404; #return the code 404   }    # link the code to the file   location = /404.html {     #EDIT this line to make it match the folder where there is your errors page     #Dont forget to create 404.html in this folder     root  /var/www/nginx/errors/;   } } 

Answer 2

Very few directives in nginx take a filesystem path. You want something like:

# The default server. server {   listen       80 default_server;   server_name  everythingelse;    root /opt/local/html;    error_page 404 /404.html;    # Everything is a 404   location / {     return 404;   }    # EDIT: You may need this to prevent return 404; recursion   location = /404.html {     internal;   } }