Odd Error Log Message

[boxturt]

My error logs keep filling up with:

 

[sat Nov 17 22:24:25 2007] [error] [client 12.34.56.789] File does not exist: /home/myedit/public_html/index.html.*

 

Note the asterisk at the end of the line. Wild card?

 

I tried to do a redirect but that doesn't work.

 

What does the error mean and is there anything to be done about it?

 

Also it's coming from multiple IP addresses.

 

thanks

Ty

[TCH-Andy]

Hi Ty,

 

What's the second part of the log line ( the referrer ) ? Are they all similar ?

 

What is your htaccess like ? Have you got any redirects there to * ?

[boxturt]

Hi Andy,

 

I took that right from the error log in cpanel so there is no second part (??)

 

My htaccess is long. No actual redirects to a wildcard that I can tell

There is only one line in it that resembles this but I don't think that's it

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.mywebsite.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ /index.html.* [R,NC]

 

 

The plot thickens........

[click]

That is a redirect to a wildcard. That RewriteRule is redirecting ([R]) requests for graphics to "/index.html.*". You don't need the ".*" after index.html.

[TCH-Andy]

As click says, your rewrite is incorrect.

 

Also, I'm sure that isn't the complete line from your raw log file ... it should have some numbers next then some more text. What is that ?

[click]

That error is from the "error log" page in cPanel. I believe there is a link in cPanel to download your raw access logs which will have more complete information if you need it.

[boxturt]

Thanks for the replies

 

I wonder why that * is there........... Hmpf!

 

Today the second part is identical, all coming out of the same place. I'm not sure but I don't recall that being the case yesterday. Yesterday it was showing as errors.

 

I can't find an instance of the error today but I see a whole lot of:

 

74-xx=xx-175.dsl1.ekgv.ca.(blahblah)frontiernet.net - - [18/Nov/2007:10:03:15 -0500] "GET

/index.html/* HTTP/1.1" 301 256 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)"

 

 

and

 

74-xx-xx-175.dsl1.ekgv.ca.(blahblah)frontiernet.net - - [18/Nov/2007:10:02:48 -0500] "GET /index.html.* HTTP/1.1" 301 256 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)"

 

I'll remove the * but I still don't seem to understand what is happening here.

 

 

I can't get to yesterdays logs, I don't archive. They are way too large

Edited November 19, 2007 by boxturt

[click]

The RewriteRules you listed look to be to prevent people from hotlinking images from your site. Anytime someone requests an image (files ending in jpg, jpeg, gif, png, bmp) that wasn't linked from your site, the RewriteRule is redirecting them to /index.html.* which obviously doesn't exist. That is triggering the original "file does not exist" error you were seeing in the cPanel error log.

 

The 301 in the raw log entries would seem to indicate that the request for /index.html.* was also redirected, but I'm not sure about that. Anyhow, removing the ".*" from the RewriteRule should fix it.