Re: [PATCH] docs: generate a static 404 page

From: Rito Rhymes

Date: Mon Mar 30 2026 - 13:21:34 EST


> Who are your users, what is your use case? Who do you think will do all
> of the setup work to create a server with a custom 404 page, but can't
> supply the page itself?

I see I framed this far too generically. My intent was narrower.

I mentioned nginx because I had looked at the live
docs.kernel.org deployment and saw that it uses nginx. The patch
is intended primarily for the canonical live documentation site.

My reasoning is that, on a public site of this size, users will
still sometimes arrive at missing URLs through stale indexed
links, old bookmarks, mistyped paths, truncated URLs, or references
from external sites. In that case, a documentation-native 404
gives them a way back into search, site navigation, and the
documentation root instead of leaving them on a generic orphaned
server error page.

The translated 404 handling also follows a live-site purpose.
When a user lands on a missing page under translated documentation,
it is more useful to keep the recovery path within that same language
section than to send them back to the English root.

Rito