Apache error log - file does not exist

Question

I am receiving some mysterious errors in my apache error log. For example:

File does not exist: /home/httpd/vhosts/studentlife.co.il/httpdocs/help_center/div.hot-jobs 
File does not exist: /home/httpd/vhosts/studentlife.co.il/httpdocs/solutions/function.filesize 
File does not exist: /home/httpd/vhosts/studentlife.co.il/httpdocs/work_abroad/div.publish 

Now I don't understand - how did my divs and functions suddenly turn into files?? Of course they do not exist, they are divs and functions written in the code. So I am not sure why I am getting these file does not exist errors.

Also, how can I debug this, since in no place am I trying to access files with these names?

Any insight will be great.

Answer 1

I would say don't worry about it.

I can make a request for /the/answer/to/life/the/universe/and/everything.42 and it would show up in your error log.

Probably some spider is hunting for vulnerabilities in your site and it's randomly trying URLs. If you see the same pages a lot then start checking to see whether you have any broken links, otherwise forget about it.

Answer 2

You could use FireBug to see the return codes (you are looking for 404) of all HTTP requests made when you open your website. Maybe you have some typo in your HTML.

Answer 3

I had this same issue in this scenario:

1. wamp installation
2. system was running perfectly til dec 01/2010.
3. restarted computer on dec 02/2010.
4. apache wouldn't start up and was logging [Thu Dec 02 09:15:45 2010] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] File does not exist: C:/wamp/www/announce

then, only then, I reminded myself I had just installed SKYPE on dec 01/2010 and that, on windows, we've got this conflict between the phone program and apache fighting for the port 80, I guess.

closed Skype, restarted services and voi là: my system is back. =)

Answer 4

One of my clients had a similar issue with Apache on Windows. On any request he was getting:

[error] [client 192.168.1.66] File does not exist: D:/apache

I realized that the DocumentRoot was missing form the httpd.conf.

Answer 5

I agree with Gareth, a spider could be hunting for vulnerabilities in your site and it's randomly trying URLs. However, there may be another reason, probably more likely.

After debugging my own scripts to see what was going on, I noticed the following. The error of the form:

[Mon May 06 21:47:29 2013] [error] [client ip] File does not exist: /path/, referer: http://domain/example.html

is visible in the error log and even though it will sound weird, it does not have to do with the static HTML file or script that generates the page. In fact, the source of this problem may be the HTML of the page referencing a broken link to an image/css/js file, so that when the browser receives the HTML and fetches these resources Apache can't find them and prints the "File Does Not Exist" error.

It is nice of Apache as it warns us about broken links.