HTTP 506 — Variant Also Negotiates
HTTP 506
Variant Also Negotiates
A content negotiation misconfiguration: the chosen variant is itself a negotiating resource, so the server loops.
What 506 actually means
From the transparent content negotiation extension. The server picked a variant to serve, but that variant is configured to negotiate too, which would recurse forever — so it stops and reports the configuration error instead. It is a server misconfiguration by definition, and vanishingly rare outside Apache setups that use type maps.
Common causes
- An Apache type map pointing at another negotiable resource
- A circular content negotiation configuration
- A misconfigured `MultiViews` setup
If you're just trying to view the page
- Nothing — this is a configuration fault on the server
- Report the URL to the site owner
If it's your site
- Check your Apache type maps (`.var` files) — a variant must be a concrete resource, not another negotiable one
- Review `MultiViews` and `Options` settings for the affected directory
- Consider dropping transparent content negotiation entirely in favour of `Accept`-header handling in the application
Reference
- Status code
- 506
- Reason phrase
- Variant Also Negotiates
- Category
- 5xx — Server Error
- Cacheable by default
- No
- Defined in
- RFC 2295 §8.1
Common questions
- What does HTTP 506 mean?
- A content negotiation misconfiguration: the chosen variant is itself a negotiating resource, so the server loops. From the transparent content negotiation extension. The server picked a variant to serve, but that variant is configured to negotiate too, which would recurse forever — so it stops and reports the configuration error instead.
- How do I fix a 506 error?
- Nothing — this is a configuration fault on the server
- Is 506 a client error or a server error?
- 506 is in the 5xx range, which means server error. The request was acceptable but the server could not fulfil it, so retrying later can succeed.
Related pages
- 500 Internal Server Error Something went wrong on the server and it has no more specific code to describe
- 502 Bad Gateway A proxy or gateway reached the server behind it and got back a broken response,
- 503 Service Unavailable The server is temporarily unable to handle the request, usually because it is ov
- 504 Gateway Timeout A proxy or gateway waited for the server behind it and gave up before an answer
- 524 A Timeout Occurred Cloudflare connected to the origin successfully but the origin did not finish re
- 521 Web Server Is Down Cloudflare could not connect to the origin server because it refused the connect
- 522 Connection Timed Out Cloudflare tried to open a connection to the origin server and never got a reply
- 520 Web Server Returned an Unknown Error Cloudflare reached the origin server but got back a response it could not make s
- 525 SSL Handshake Failed The TLS handshake between Cloudflare and the origin server failed.
- 526 Invalid SSL Certificate The origin server presented a TLS certificate that Cloudflare could not validate
- 530 Origin DNS Error A Cloudflare error shown alongside a 1xxx error code that carries the real expla
- 501 Not Implemented The server does not support the functionality needed to fulfil the request, usua