HTTP 444 (No Response) instead of 404, 403 error pages?

Question

I always use "return 444" in the nginx config to stop crawlers that access my servers directly via IP or via the wrong hostname. It just closes the connection. Perfect.

Now I want to use this response instead of the standard 404.html pages that nginx throws, but I fail at configuring.

error_page 500 502 503 504 /custom_50x.html;

This works fine, but I can't "return 444" like here:

server {
    listen      80;
    server_name "";
    return      444;
}

Does anybody know a way to combine these two?

Answer 1

Redirect request then you can return status code easily:

server {
  error_page 500 502 503 504 @blackhole;

  location @blackhole {
    return 444;
  }
}