Catch all non-handled requests with HTTP 200 + static file

Question

I am trying to catch all traffic not caught by a sites-enabled configuration file, and instead of throwing the default 404, to instead throw a 200 with a blank response instead.

So, for example, if my site is https://www.example.com at ip x.x.x.x and somebody maps https://www.bad.com to my ip at x.x.x.x they would simply get a 200 with a blank content.

To accomplish this, I have a file located at /var/www/index.html that is a blank file, and have the following rule set up in {nginxdir}/conf.d/200catchall.conf which is imported in the standard {nginxdir}/nginx.conf file:

# Serve blank page to any requests not intended for one of our servers
server {
       listen 443;
       server_name _;
       location / {
                root /var/www
       }
}

This works great for rendering the 200 blank screen for a request to https://www.bad.com. However, it tries to traverse the directory when something like https://www.bad.com/cgibin/nofile.php is requested, and ends up throwing an error to error.log and results ultimately in a 404.

I've also attempted to replace the root directive with a try_files /var/www/index.html directive, which seems to give the same result...

Have been pulling my hair out for a while on this - any advice?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

4

To avoid sending any content back, minimal load for your server, return a 204 No Content response instead. See Wikipedia Entry.

server {
  listen 80 default_server;
  listen 443 ssl default_server;

  return 204;
}

An alternative approach to setting up a catch all server is described here.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

Community

1
1

answered Sep 27 '14 at 03:22

Dayo

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5
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This is what ultimately helped me. I'm using a 204 for all requests that aren't intended for my server. Thanks! – matt Sep 30 '14 at 19:43

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 26 '14 at 22:28

1

Simplest catch-all looks like this:

server {
  listen 80 default_server;
  listen 443 ssl default_server;

  return 200;
}

answered Sep 26 '14 at 22:28

Alexey Ten

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Thanks for the quick response Alexey...problem is that if I get a request for most file formats other than *.html (e.g. `https://www.bad.com/flarg/blarf.zip`), the browser actually downloads the response as that filetype, rather than rendering a blank html page...any advice? – matt Sep 26 '14 at 22:34

Catch all non-handled requests with HTTP 200 + static file

2 Answers2