How can I return 204 and not 404 for the missing favicon.ico file in Nginx?

For my sites, I usually have two blocks server{}

: one serves the site, and the other serves static content for that site from a different domain. Since the file is favicon.ico

always requested from the main domain instead of the static domain, I have to process this particular file in the server{}

site block and not in the static file block.

When no file favicon.ico

is found, Nginx returns my 404 error page as well as a 404 HTTP status code. However, I don't want to post these bits for my pretty 404 page. I want to send a completely empty response with a 204 status code. Below is what I tried, but it doesn't work. Is there a correct way to do this? The idea is that 204 will point to the file found, but a completely empty image.

Also, is my attempt to save bits actually a bad idea? If actually returning 204 instead of 404 is a bad idea, is there a more elegant way to return a blank 404 page without creating a new and effectively empty file and setting that as a directive error_page

inside that location block?

server {
    ...


    error_page  404          /../static/404.html;

    location @return_204 {
        return  204;
    }

    # Case-insensitive matching of .txt and .xml files.
    # (Example: robots.txt, crossdomain.xml, and sitemap.xml)
    location ~* \.(txt|xml)$ {
        try_files  $uri /../static/$uri;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico {
        log_not_found  off;
        error_page     404 = @return_204;

        try_files      $uri /../static/$uri;
    }

    ...
}