Hello:

I'm having a persistent problem with my wiki. Daily, the Apache error log is showing tons of error messages like the following:

www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/sort_up.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ sort_down.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ sort_none.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/bullet.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/headbg.jpg, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ file_icon.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ lock_icon.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ mail_icon.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ discussionitem_icon.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/user.gif, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:23 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ Opera6Fixes.css, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:24 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ Opera7Fixes.css, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:24 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ Opera9Fixes.css, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:24 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/ KHTMLFixes.css, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:24 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/FF2Fixes.css, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki www.mywiki.org [Sun Jan 31 23:11:24 2010] [error] [client 67.142.163.20] File does not exist: /path/to/wiki/mywiki/common, referer: http://www.mywiki.org/index.php?title=A_Page_On_My_Wiki

I don't think that these messages are being generated as a result of crawlers or bots crawling the site. I think the error messages are thrown when legitimate users access legitimate pages. The reason I believe this to be true is because I've loaded a page on the wiki, then immediately looked at the error log and found my IP address with the same error messages. It seems that the referring page is looking for files and stylesheets that are in the skins/ directory but it can't find the skins/ directory and is looking for them in the site root.

Any suggestions on how to fix this are greatly appreciated.

Patricia Barden patricia@prwatch.org