More information out of error log?

[Igor Sysoev]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 05:42:00PM -0600, Nick Pearson wrote:

> Hi Ilan,
> 
> Try changing the output format for the error log file to include the user
> agent.

the error_log does not allow to change format.

> Or, look for requests to /letters/.mp3 in your access log, which may
> already contain the user agent.  You may find that these requests are coming
> from a bot that is parsing the links in your site incorrectly.  I see this
> consistently on the ten or so sites I host, although the errors I usually
> see are for the directory and filename with no file extension (such as
> /forms/document when the link actually points to /forms/document.pdf).
> 
> It might also help to compare the remote IP addresses to see whether the bad
> requests always come from the same IP or IP range which might indicate that
> it is a bot.
> 
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Ilan Berkner <iberkner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi All,
> >
> > We are getting many of these errors:
> >
> > 2009/01/13 13:04:28 [error] 27100#0: *782718 open()
> > "/home/spellcit/public_html/letters/.mp3" failed (2: No such file or
> > directory), client: 204.38.160.220, server: www.spellingcity.com, request:
> > "GET /letters/.mp3 HTTP/1.1", host: "www.spellingcity.com"
> >  Essentially one of 2 things is happening:
> >
> > (1) One of our php or flash files is trying to access this invalid file
> > "/letters/.mp3" or
> > (2) A user is trying to access this directly (unlikely).
> >
> > The problem is that the log entry does not on the surface reveal enough
> > information about where the request is coming from so we're having a tough
> > time identifying the source of the request.  Is there a way (is it possible)
> > to add more information to the log entry to better identify the source of
> > the request (swf, php, html, direct, etc.).
> >
> > Thanks
> >

-- 
Igor Sysoev
http://sysoev.ru/en/