Previous questoin... maybe I'm grabbing at straws

iberci · January 15, 2009, 9:15pm

I previously posted a question about getting more information about an
error
that we’re getting in our Nginx log files. The error is as follows:

2009/01/15 11:47:57 [error] 15704#0: *689561 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”
What I’m trying to figure out is which php or swf script (or maybe its
not a
php or swf script) is actually making the call to request this
non-existent
file.

Out of 25,385 errors in our log, 16,952 are caused by this issue.

One of the suggestions I got was to turn on the access logs, which I
did.
In looking at this IP address at the access logs, this is what I get,
which
unfortunately is not much.

204.38.160.220 - - [15/Jan/2009:12:31:26 -0600] 404 “GET /letters/.mp3
HTTP/1.1” 169 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC; en-US; rv:1.0.2)
Gecko/20030208 Netscape/7.02” “-”

I was thinking about creating a dummy “.mp3” file (or rewrite rule) to
capture traffic and get try to get some more info out of the header…
just
a thought.

Any suggestions / thoughts would be very much appreciated.

Ilan

iberci · January 15, 2009, 9:47pm

You could inspect the headers with firebug or similar tool or add the
$http_referer variable to the log format to see what is causing that or
even a rewrite rule to catch the request in a php script and logs its
output in another file or in a DB.

iberci · January 15, 2009, 9:55pm

Thank you for your response.

Inspecting the headers with Firebug is not an option as I don’t have
access to the system causing the problem (its not a virus / or bot, I’m
pretty sure its one of our apps that is causing it).
$http_referer is already part of the access log format and is coming
up
blank.

I am thinking of writing some custom code to catch this particular issue
and
see if I can get more info on it.

Thanks

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Juan Fco. Giordana

iberci · January 15, 2009, 9:57pm

What about soundmanager2.swf?

http://www.spellingcity.com/soundmanager2.swf

I see with firebug it’s calling /data/null.mp3

iberci · January 15, 2009, 10:10pm

Are you going to it directly?

We use soundmanager2.swf to make many calls to .mp3 files. If you call
it
directly (as you’re doing I think) it is showing you the default call
directory. Soundamanger2.swf requires parameters for it to call the
appropriate mp3 files. Note that the /data/ directory is not the same
one
that is showing up in the error log (i.e. “/letters/.mp3”).

What I’m not clear on is why the referring information is not available
in
the log…

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Juan Fco. Giordana

iberci · January 15, 2009, 10:42pm

What does your access log say, you should be able to grep for 404’s,
which may give you the referrer.

You can always disable logging 404’s as errors

server {

 log_not_found off;

}

If you want to know more about the request, try ngrep

Cheers

Dave

iberci · January 15, 2009, 11:01pm

Flash doesn’t always send referring information. It’s pretty hit or
miss and depends on the browser being used, the alignment of the
stars, etc. Bottom line, you might have referring information come
from flash, but definitely DO NOT count on it.

iberci · January 15, 2009, 10:37pm

Ilan B. wrote:

Are you going to it directly?

Just entered on the site and looked at the header information with
Firebug.

We use soundmanager2.swf to make many calls to .mp3 files. If you call
it directly (as you’re doing I think) it is showing you the default call
directory. Soundamanger2.swf requires parameters for it to call the
appropriate mp3 files. Note that the /data/ directory is not the same
one that is showing up in the error log (i.e. “/letters/.mp3”).

I would look in the script (php, xml, fla?) that generates the path for
these mp3 files. I think it’s related to an undefined or empty variable
being printed and when the browser sends the request the web server
can’t find the file, etc, etc.

You may be doing something like


$filename = getMyFile($id);
echo '/path-to/ . $filename . '.mp3';

But if getMyFile() returns an empty string the problem arises.


if (!$filename = getMyFile($id)) {
$filename = 'something';
// or fix the function
}
echo '/path-to/ . $filename . ‘.mp3’;

Could be a millon things.

What I’m not clear on is why the referring information is not available
in the log…

Yesterday I saw on this thread that flash couldn’t be sending the
referring information. Otherwise you could post your log settings here
and that may help.