no ip address shown in my log files

how can I block

[Crowbar99]

I am noticing more and more, that someone is searching for crazy stuff on my site, and the log file will not contain the actual IP of the offender. They are mostly looking for a awstat exploit, which I don't use. I have blocked all of the chinese spambots that I have found over the past year, by their IP address, but these clowns are not leaving this info in their log entries.
I really want to block this nonsense, but I am stumped! I do have a nice list of questionable IP's that I have already blocked, that I would be happy to share with everyone, but most of you guys probably have this info way ahead of me.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[jdMorgan]

Crowbar99,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Are you saying that your raw server access log doesn't contain the IP address? If so, what does it contain, a hostname? If you're trying to get information about these abusers from your 'stats' file, then you'll probably have a lot of missing info, so I recommend examining your raw log files for the time period in question.

Jim

[Crowbar99]

Thanks Jim,
Yes I am looking in the raw log file, where usually there is an IP address and a host name, which I believe that some people can fake the host name, but usually the ip does not lie. My site is about antique furniture, and as an example, I see that a referral is coming from german car racing site and a page on that site that does not exist. I see a lot of activity searching for pages that don't exist, and usually ban the ip of the offender, but they must be on to that, and are now somehow hiding their IP.

[edited by: jdMorgan at 4:52 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2005]
[edit reason] Speling [/edit]

[jdMorgan]

This looks like some problem with the way your host generates log files, rather than anyone 'hiding' their IP address. For one thing, it is impossible for a requestor to receive a reply from your server if an incorrect IP address is provided; The IP address is required in order for your server to send any response.

You could probably extract the information you need by using a custom script to log all accesses. But obviously, this would take a lot of effort on your part, and slow down your server as well. So, I'd suggest contacting your host about this.

Jim