lucy24 - 4:50 pm on Oct 22, 2012 (gmt 0)

Match of "rx ^((?:(?:POS|GE)T|OPTIONS|HEAD))$" against "REQUEST_METHOD" required.

Now, I realize Apache is not English, but that sounds as if the googlebot is trying something other than POST, GET, OPTIONS or HEAD. What else is there? Within the googlebot's vocabulary, I mean. In your regular logs, what was it trying to do?

File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/501.shtml ... and now the newly created 501

How newly? Do you mean that you went and created it after Apache went looking for it?

shouldn't a default kick in if its not present

A default did kick in. When you tried it on yourself, you didn't get a blank page did you?

while that error does not show any longer it still does not serve the error page

That was cryptic. Do you mean that it won't show you the error page even if you ask for it by name?

[edited by: incrediBILL at 10:27 pm (utc) on Oct 22, 2012]
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