file does not exist c:/wamp/www/favicon.ico in apache error_log

Question

There are always the log showing: file does not exist c:/wamp/www/favicon.ico in apache error_log. I used wampserver, why?

Answer 1

This happens because (almost every) browser searches for a favicon by default. If the accessed page don't inform a valid URL for it, Apache uses the root directory.

You have two choices. You can create a website icon for each of your websites, or you tell Apache not to log that event as an error message.

If you choose the second option, add the following code to each VirtualHost, or at least the ones which don’t have a favicon file:

Redirect 404 /favicon.ico
<Location /favicon.ico>
   ErrorDocument 404 "No favicon"
</Location>

Or, you create an empty file with the name “favicon.ico” in the directory root of Apache (for exemple /var/www/ , but no favicon will be shown by the browsers for your site).

Answer 2

Do you have a reference to the favicon.ico file in your HTML source?

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

Even if you don't, many browsers try to access this file anyway when visiting a new page. Favicon is used when adding the website to favourites/bookmarks. Some browsers (for example Firefox) also display favicon on the website's tab on the top of the screen.

Your best bet would be to simply add an favicon.ico file with a 16x16 icon to the c:/wamp/www/ directory.