Sunday, October 31, 2021

[SOLVED] httpd local virtualhost example

Issue

-- Original post ---

I'd like to setup a dev env to play with some apache features. I'm running httpd on fedora.

I added to hosts local redirects 

# cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 example1.com
127.0.0.1 example2.com

# cmkdir /var/www/example1;      echo "Hello from /var/www/example1/index.html" > /var/www/example1/index.html
# cmkdir /var/www/example2;      echo "Hello from /var/www/example2/index.html" > /var/www/example2/index.html
# cmkdir /var/www/example2/sub ; echo "Hello from /var/www/example2/sub/index.html" > /var/www/example2/sub/index.html

# cvi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
<VirtualHost _default_:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var//www/html"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/example1"
    ServerName example1.com

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/example2"
    ServerName example2.com

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/example2/sub"
    ServerName sub.example2.com
    ServerPath "/sub/"
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule "^(/sub/.*)" "/var/www/example2$1"

</VirtualHost>

# capachectl -t ; apachectl restart

# curl localhost
Hello from /var/www/html/index.html
# curl example1.com
Hello from /var/www/example1/index.html
# curl example2.com
Hello from /var/www/example2/index.html
# curl sub.example2.com
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="text/javascript">
<script type="text/javascript">
... ( lots of stuff different from the one i echoed) ...

If I do the same thing in local firefox - localhost works as expected, example1.com works as expected, but sub.example2.com redirects me to example2.com.

Can you please help me to figure out how to configure a local sub-domain? What is missing? Based on https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/vhosts/examples.html I believe what I did is correct.

-- Edit / Update ---

If I follow the advice below from Newbie and change only the rewrite rule, without making any other changes from the setup above:

    <VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
        DocumentRoot "/var/www/example2/sub"
        ServerName sub.example2.com
        ServerPath "/sub/"
#        RewriteEngine On
#        RewriteRule "^(/sub/.*)" "/var/www/example2$1"

    </VirtualHost>

I get :

# curl sub.example2.com
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: sub.example2.com

If I 

# cat /etc/hosts | grep sub
127.0.0.1 example2.com sub.example2.com

It works as expected 

#curl example2.com
Hello from /var/www/example2/index.html
# curl sub.example2.com
Hello from /var/www/example2/sub/index.html

Still this seems to be strange setup. I don't want to create /etc/hosts record for each sub-domain... Shouldn't it be possible to handle this situation only via the httpd VirtualHost setting, without changing the DNS settings locally or even worse - adding C records in the DNS of a domain(if not localhost)? Any hint what I'm doing wrong? How can I get sub.example1.com to work without modifying the dns settings?

Regards, Pavel


Solution

I believe I found out the answer to my question ...

** How to run locally sub-domains?**

/etc/hosts does not support wild cards(*.example2.com) and one needs to setup a local dns proxy server like dnsmasq for example. Otherwise for dev purposes you have to list (and then maintain :/ ) the sub-domains one-by-one in the /etc/hosts for local dev purposes.

How to run the sub-domains via official DNS records for domain ?

Seems laziest approach is to setup DNS settings having:

example2.com     A      the-server-IP
example2.com     MX 0   example2.com    
*.example2.com   CNAME  example2.com

Looking forward to your comments, if there is smarter approach. If you agree this is the way to go - please accept the answer, so other members know it is the way to go.

Regards, Pavel



Answered By - ppavlov
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