I think the conflicting school of thought here is that if it returns 401, it reveals the information that the project exists, which is a problem for some people.

Perhaps 404 page should suggest a login?

Or we can always add a system property that secretly controls the behaviour...

I agree about the conflict of point of view.
Even if it's weird to have a login in the 404 it could help if we explain to our users the behavior.
A parameter (hudson config or system property) to control the behavior is the best solution.
Even if I understand the 404 solution, my Hudson server isn't part of Secret US Embassy resources ( ) thus I prefer to provide an ergonomics solution (401+login page) to my users

My practical experience is also rather annoying, because users regularly complain that they got an invalid URL via E-Mail.

I would not display any http status at all in these cases.
My proposal:

• not logged in: display a message like "You need to log in" together with the login fields and redirect afterwards
• logged in: display a message like "You have no access to this page"
  This is IMHO how many other webapps do it.

Regarding Kohsukes comment
> if it returns 401, it reveals the information that the project exists, which is a problem for some people.
the non existing URLs should also redirect to the loghin page, so that nothing will be revealed.

If this is still not a feasable solution for all users, a config checkbox like "redirect invalid URLs to login page when not logged in" could help.

https://issues.jenkins-ci.org/browse/JENKINS-8930?focusedCommentId=148959#comment-148959 is a dupe

If i access uri on jenkins beyond vase url, eg https://bhaus.gruppe.de/jenkins/job/MyJOB/ i get HTTP 404 .
If i call https://bhaus.gruppe.de/jenkins/ and authenficate with user /pwd ( in my case project matrix against ldap realm) and the call https://bhaus.gruppe.de/jenkins/job/MyJOB/ it works!

My esceptation would be that if not authenficated the user get redirected to login mask and the redirectd to entered url after successfull authefication.
I think its a War file web.xml. configuration issue.

This behaviour is very annoying, esepcially we use a redmine plugin for jenkins which states link in the issue tracker, which beeing clicked lead to 404 because use isn't authorized the first time in the browser session.
We have no SSO although redmine and jenkins are both backed by ldap server, a new login is needed per session.

This problems is old now and again i vote to fix this very soon.
Tx for contribution and help!

I think this is still an outstanding issue. Not sure if it's just a web.xml issue - you can specify a error handler for 404's but that won't solve the issue of not being able to get to the job in question. The login handler will likely need to be modified to accept redirecting to the job url in the email.

I sent a pull request a few days ago. https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins/pull/445

Maybe someone wants to comment on it ?

Code changed in jenkins
User: Jerome Lacoste
Path:
changelog.html
core/src/main/java/hudson/model/Item.java
core/src/main/java/jenkins/model/Jenkins.java
core/src/main/resources/hudson/model/Messages.properties
http://jenkins-ci.org/commit/jenkins/84f08379e8a06f9cec0765da0ac397950fbad1d3
Log:
[FIXED JENKINS-8214] Added a DISCOVER permission to allow anonymous users to be presented the login screen when accessing job URLs

Code changed in jenkins
User: Jerome Lacoste
Path:
changelog.html
core/src/main/java/hudson/model/Item.java
core/src/main/java/jenkins/model/Jenkins.java
core/src/main/resources/hudson/model/Messages.properties
http://jenkins-ci.org/commit/jenkins/3c349c0cd460bea2f017b52e92550bab0f91247e
Log:
Merge pull request #453 from lacostej/lacostej-JENKINS-8214-access-private-URL-2

[FIXED JENKINS-8214] Added a DISCOVER permission to allow anonymous users to be presented the login screen when accessing job URLs

Compare: https://github.com/jenkinsci/jenkins/compare/5f92a03...3c349c0

Integrated in jenkins_main_trunk #1679
[FIXED JENKINS-8214] Added a DISCOVER permission to allow anonymous users to be presented the login screen when accessing job URLs (Revision 84f08379e8a06f9cec0765da0ac397950fbad1d3)

Result = SUCCESS
jerome.lacoste : 84f08379e8a06f9cec0765da0ac397950fbad1d3
Files :

• core/src/main/java/hudson/model/Item.java
• changelog.html
• core/src/main/java/jenkins/model/Jenkins.java
• core/src/main/resources/hudson/model/Messages.properties

Integrated in jenkins_ui-changes_branch #26
[FIXED JENKINS-8214] Added a DISCOVER permission to allow anonymous users to be presented the login screen when accessing job URLs (Revision 84f08379e8a06f9cec0765da0ac397950fbad1d3)

Result = SUCCESS
jerome.lacoste : 84f08379e8a06f9cec0765da0ac397950fbad1d3
Files :

• core/src/main/resources/hudson/model/Messages.properties
• changelog.html
• core/src/main/java/hudson/model/Item.java
• core/src/main/java/jenkins/model/Jenkins.java