Virtual host

Virtual host.

I am trying to set up a FreeBSD server as web server for virtual hosting. That is, provide www services for both http://www.mydomain.com and http://www.othersdomain.com.

Creating Virtual WWW Servers With BSD by Ralph Huntington

These are simple techniques that are known to work with FreeBSD 2.x and
3.x and BSD/OS 2.x, 3.x 4.x. I expect they are just as workable with just
about any flavor of BSD. These instructions assume you are using a recent
distribution of the Apache http daemon and that appropriate directories
are in place on the server (or on a mounted drive or partition) for the
virtual host's http documents and logs. Also assumed is that domain name
services are in place for the virtual domain and that an IP address has
been assigned.

[Note: These instructions differ slightly from those suggested by BSDI
in the release notes for BSD/OS 2.1. My (humble) opinion is that these
techniques are slightly less mystical and slightly easier to implement.]

There are three things you need to do:

1. Bind the IP Address to the Ethernet Card

Place a line in /etc/rc.local that looks like this:

ifconfig $nic inet $ipaddress netmask $mask alias

and another one like this:

route add -host $ipaddress 127.0.0.1

where $nic is the Ethernet device and $ipaddress is the IP address of
the virtual domain or host. That will take care of it the next time you
boot. To make it all take effect immediately, issue the same commands from
the prompt. You may get a message saying 'File Exists'. Ignore that. Try
to ping the address and/or the name.

If pinging fails, the address is not being bound to the Ethernet device
for some reason. You will need to solve that problem before proceeding.

2. tell the http daemon about the virtual host

You will need to edit the httpd configuration file httpd.conf which is
usually found in /usr/local/www/server/conf/ or /usr/local/www/config/ or
/usr/local/apache/conf/ on FreeBSD machines and in /var/www/conf/ on BSDI
boxes. Go to the BindAddress line and make it say

BindAddress *

Move to the end of the file and create a VirtualHost entry for each host,
including the 'real' host. Two are shown here, one for the 'real' host
and one for a virtual host. Any httpd.conf or srm.conf directive may go
into a VirtualHost entry. Directives entered here override prior directives.

<VirtualHost a.b.c.d> # 'real' host IP address
ServerAdmin webmaster@primary-domain.net# @your-domain
ServerRoot /var/www/ # or wherever it is...
DocumentRoot /var/www/docs/ # likewise...
ServerName www.primary-domain.net
ErrorLog /var/www/logs/error_log # wherever you keep them
TransferLog /var/www/logs/access_log # daemon will start logs
Alias /icons/ /var/www/icons/
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/scripts/ # or whatever...
AddType text/x-server-parsed-html .html
AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .cgi # just examples.
DefaultType text/plain
</VirtualHost> # don't forget this line.

<VirtualHost a.b.c.e> # virtual host IP address
ServerAdmin webmaster@virtual-domain.com# @virtual-domain
ServerRoot /var/www/ # keep this the same
DocumentRoot /some/path/docs/
ServerName www.virtual-domain.com
ErrorLog /some/path/logs/error_log
TransferLog /some/path/logs/access_log
Alias /icons/ /var/www/icons/ # use standards.
Alias /images/ /some/path/images/ # their own stuff.
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /var/www/scripts/ # scripts must be approved.
DefaultType text/plain
</VirtualHost>

3. SIGHUP and Test

# /apache/bin/apachectl restart

(I symlink /usr/local/apache/ to /apache/) or simply

# kill -HUP `cat httpd.pid`

At this point, you should be up and running and able to serve docs. Make
sure the http daemon is still running. If there is an error in httpd.conf
that cannot be resolved, such as a non-existant directory, the daemon
will die. If the daemon does die, issue the command httpd right from the
command line (as root, of course) and it will give you the line number in
httpd.conf that has the problem.

Once you know the daemon is running, try to bring up the virtual host's
index.html page in your browser. If you cannot, then you have a
configuration error of some kind.

Try to bring up the 'real' hosts home page, also. If you cannot, make
sure all directories referenced in httpd.conf actually exist and are
world readable. If there are things that cannot be resolved, the daemon
will not start at all.

Every time you try to start the daemon, check the logs. If you can, have
a window running

% tail -f /var/log/messages

Check all the logs for clues. Usually it's a missing file or directory or
a syntax error in a configuration file. Try testing the daemon from the
command line:

# /apache/bin/apachectl configtest

and see what message (if any) you get back. If you receive no error
message, the daemon is probably running. Verify this with:

% ps ax | grep httpd

You should see a parent and several child daemons running.