Root directory errors when path is relative?

[Darla]

I keep getting "file not found" entries in my error log caused by someone who seems to be trying to access html files, but from the root directory and not with the right path.
Like this: www.mydomain.com/picture1.html instead of www.mydomain.com/pictures/picture1.html.
The html files are all pages that display pictures. It's always the same IP, he has tried that 5 times in the past two days and has produced a few hundred error messages.

So my question is what do these entries mean or what is this guy trying to do?

[wkitty42]

what does your access log show for him? it could be a bot that's out of whack (ie: looking at a relative url and not prepending the necessary base info {pictures/pic1.html vs. http*//site/pictures/pic1.html})

[jatar_k]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Darla,

or maybe a bad link from somewhere?

<added>word is that you can configure apache to add referer data to the error log, I asked our sysadmin. Though I dont know if you have access to apache conf.

[Darla]

Thanks for your answers :)

No I don't have access to apache conf., but here is one of the failed attempts to load a page that I found in the access logs:

211.99.203.197 - - [30/Sep/2003:00:33:56+0200] "GET /charisma6.html HTTP/1.1" 404 1372 "http://bootyliouscookierd.findapix.com/blog/myblog.asp" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.00; Windows 98"

I checked out the findapix.com page, but I don't know why anyone there should link to my pages. The logs also show visits from this IP that 'worked', with the right
path and all. Maybe I should email the webmaster of that site?

[Darla]

Oh, never mind. Bootylious is one of the members of that, uh, community. Maybe I can just mail her and ask what she's doing with my site? :)

[wkitty42]

darla,

yes, it seems that way... and shouldn't "community" be in quotes ;) geez...