Where is Tomcat's default error page located?

Question

Where are Tomcat's default error pages located or how can I customize them? I wish to beautify and change the look and feel of current error pages of Tomcat.

Answer 1

The default error pages are created by Java code:

• the HTML content is created by the ErrorReportValve: see source code,
• the localized messages are in the LocalStrings_<locale>.properties files of the same package: see the English version.

If you want to replace them with static content, you need to:

• create a static HTML file, e.g. $CATALINA_BASE/errors/404.html,
• configure the ErrorReportValve accordingly:

  <Host>
      <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve"
             errorCode.404="errors/404.html" />
  </Host>
  

External resources in error pages may cause problem: you must check that no security constraints are defined on those resources.

Edit: This of course works if the web applications don't define any error pages. If a custom error page exists in the application it has priority over the error pages defined in the ErrorReportValve.

Also see:

• ErrorReportValve documentation
• I need that it redirects multiple sites to the same error page