Apache and Favicon

6/8/2012

When deploying an IntraWeb ISAPI application with Apache you may see "File does not exist: C:/Apache2.2/htdocs/favicon.ico" errors in Apache error log.

This is NOT an IntraWeb issue but an Apache issue. This kind of issue may happen with some browsers (some versions of Chrome and Opera, mostly) but not all.

If you don't know what a Favicon is, read more about it here.

The request for the favicon never gets to the IntraWeb application, but handled internally by Apache server. If the icon doesn't exist in the DocumentRoot Apache folder (default \ServerRoot\htdocs), Apache will log the browser request for Favicon.ico as an error (in the \logs\error.log Apache log file). This kind of error never gets to the user but may fill your error.log file with useless error messages, and for sure is very annoying. If you google "apache favicon" you will see that this is a very common (and old) Apache issue.

Two solutions for Apache's Favicon error:

1) Create an 16x16 icon and put it in DocumentRoot Apache folder, naming it as favicon.ico. This icon file will be served by Apache as the favicon for every favicon request.

2) Disable favicon error log. This, in my opinion, is the best alternative, once the file will not be served by Apache and no error will be generated. To disable favicon error log, do this:

• Open Apache's httpd.conf file
• Scroll to the end of the file. Copy this text and paste there (exactly as shown):

# Don't bother looking for favicon.ico
Redirect 404 /favicon.ico

# Don't bother sending the custom error page for favicon.ico
<Location /favicon.ico>
 ErrorDocument 404 "No favicon"
</Location>

More information:

• http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Favicon
• http://nfolamp.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/apache-favicon-ico-does-not-exist-yes-its-truly-annoying/
• http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/02/no-favicon/
  

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