Apache/MultiDomains/SingleIP/Vhost nightmare

[digitalfrog]

Okay, I'm loosing sleep on this one.

- I'm hosting my webserver at home, and I have a dedicated IP address from my provider.
- I have 3 domains registered (2 from one provider, the last one from another).
- all 3 domains point to the same IP address, NAT'd to my webserver.

Without virtualhosts, all domains work ok and can access a same webpage.

I've been playing with virtual hosts configuration and it somewhat works:

domain a.nl works ok -> points to content for a.nl (with or without www prefix)
domain b.info works ok -> points to content for b.info (with or without www prefix)
domain c.com does not work as planned:
www.c.com points to a.nl
c.com points to b.info

This is driving me crazy, I ended up with the most minimalistic vhosts file I could think off, and the 10's of changes I've made lead to the same result.

The log files for c.com are always empty, which makes me think that apache never receives the info for that domain.

Any help is welcome.

I have 3 files, one for each domain:

<VirtualHost 192.168.1.8:80>
ServerAdmin digitalfrog@gmail.com
ServerName www.domainX.com
ServerAlias *.domainX.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/domainX
</VirtualHost>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/DomainX.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/DomainX_access.log combined


hostname -a gives me all the alternatives FQDN (c.com www.c.com a.nl www.a.nl etc....)

Help :-) !

[windependence]

I'm pretty sure your vhost IP does not need the port number after it.

Your vhost file is way bigger than it needs to be to get it working. Have you looked at the expamples on apache.org? There is a great Wiki here:
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/

Don't quote me but I think your vhost section can be as lean as this:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName www.example.net
ServerAlias example.net
DocumentRoot /var/www/example
</VirtualHost>

-Tim

[digitalfrog]

Hi Tim, thanks for your reply.

I indeed tried the minimalistic apache wiki suggestion, also using wildcard rather than ip:80, same result.

It does work for 2 domains, not the 3d one. So I guess there must be something else around that makes that apache never get's the right domain info for that last domain and even not getting a chance to call the related vhost config file.

[windependence]

Hi Tim, thanks for your reply.

I indeed tried the minimalistic apache wiki suggestion, also using wildcard rather than ip:80, same result.

It does work for 2 domains, not the 3d one. So I guess there must be something else around that makes that apache never get's the right domain info for that last domain and even not getting a chance to call the related vhost config file.

I just noticed Apache 2 is much different than what I am used to. I run my sites on 1.3 on FreeBSD.

Look at this:

http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/DebianLikePlatform

Looks like you have to enable the vhosts like a kernel module kinda. I have never done one this way, always used vhost files which I believe is still supported but is deprecated.

-Tim

[digitalfrog]

Oh, I did not know about this.

I tested it, and guess what... same results :-(

[andguent]

I have a 2 site minimalistic setup that appears to do what you want. Maybe I'm missing something about your problem though.

head /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*
==> 000-default <==
NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName domainA

DocumentRoot /var/www/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

==> 001-domainB <==
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName domainB

DocumentRoot /var/www/domainB/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/domainB/>

I don't know if that 'NameVirtualHost *' line at the beginning of mine makes a difference or not.

In /etc/apache2/apache2.conf, have you changed LogLevel to debug? It may give more info on why things are going where.

Do you mind posting 'cat /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*' here?

[ghostknife]

OK. Firstly doing the following will work, I'm sure.

First make sure you delete any virtual host data you setup for previous ones, then put the following directly inside your httpd.conf.

There after if everything is working as intended you can move the 3 files. Make sure you copy/paste the following and modify as needed, instead of trying to see what the differences are. It's possible that you are missing something trivial, which a clean setup will help with.

Then make sure all the directories for document roots exist and that apache has read permissions. Easiest is to do is run the following commands for your web root parent directory.


find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;
find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;


Put the following inside httpd.conf

NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin yourname@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/a.nl
ServerName a.nl
ServerAlias www.a.nl
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/a.nl-error_log
CustomLog var/log/apache2/a.nl-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin yourname@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/b.info
ServerName b.info
ServerAlias www.b.info
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/b.info-error_log
CustomLog var/log/apache2/b.info-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin yourname@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/c.com
ServerName c.com
ServerAlias www.c.com
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/c.com-error_log
CustomLog var/log/apache2/c.com-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>


Then restart apache and see if it works now.

If it doesn't work, please do the following and paste the output:

ping -c1 a.nl
ping -c1 b.info
ping -c1 c.com

[digitalfrog]

OK. Firstly doing the following will work, I'm sure.

First make sure you delete any virtual host data you setup for previous ones, then put the following directly inside your httpd.conf.

There after if everything is working as intended you can move the 3 files. Make sure you copy/paste the following and modify as needed, instead of trying to see what the differences are. It's possible that you are missing something trivial, which a clean setup will help with.

Then make sure all the directories for document roots exist and that apache has read permissions. Easiest is to do is run the following commands for your web root parent directory.


find /var/www -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;
find /var/www -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;


Put the following inside httpd.conf

NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin yourname@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/a.nl
ServerName a.nl
ServerAlias www.a.nl
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/a.nl-error_log
CustomLog var/log/apache2/a.nl-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin yourname@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/b.info
ServerName b.info
ServerAlias www.b.info
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/b.info-error_log
CustomLog var/log/apache2/b.info-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin yourname@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/c.com
ServerName c.com
ServerAlias www.c.com
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/c.com-error_log
CustomLog var/log/apache2/c.com-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>


Then restart apache and see if it works now.

If it doesn't work, please do the following and paste the output:

ping -c1 a.nl
ping -c1 b.info
ping -c1 c.com

Hi ghostknife, thanks for your post.

I have done what you suggested, but sadly it did not fix it.
Here is the output of the ping commands...



Domain that works: (this is my public IP)


root@media:/var/log/apache2# ping -c1 a.nl
PING a.nl (85.145.238.25) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from xxx.xxx.xxx.nl (85.145.238.25): icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=5.98 ms

--- a.nl ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 5.983/5.983/5.983/0.000 ms


Second domain that works too:


root@media:/var/log/apache2# ping -c1 b.info
PING media (192.168.1.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from media (192.168.1.8): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.013 ms

--- media ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.013/0.013/0.013/0.000 ms



And the domain that does not get redirected where it should be, but to a.nl instead:


root@media:/var/log/apache2# ping -c1 c.com
PING media (192.168.1.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from media (192.168.1.8): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.013 ms

--- media ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.013/0.013/0.013/0.000 ms


one of the domain that works pings to the public ip adress
one of the domain that works pings to my localhost
the domain that does not work points to my locahost (but apache see's it as the first domain that pings to the public address)

I'm 99% sure this has to do with the way the domains are setup, resolved or whatever. But I can't demonstrate it.
Today, I tried to sniff my lan to detect what domain name was sent to apache when I pointed my webbrowser to the site that does not re-route, but never managed to get any meaningfull data.

[ghostknife]

Please paste your whole httpd.conf.

And make sure there are NO other <VirtualHost> tags in httpd.conf or any of the files it includes.

[digitalfrog]

Here we go:


NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin digitalfrog@a.nl
DocumentRoot /var/www/a.nl
ServerName a.nl
ServerAlias www.a.nl
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/a.nl-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/a.nl-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin digitalfrog@b.info
DocumentRoot /var/www/b.info
ServerName b.info
ServerAlias www.b.info
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/b.info-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/b.info-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin digitalfrog@c.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/c.com
ServerName c.com
ServerAlias www.c.com
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/c.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/c.com-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

[ghostknife]

Your whole httpd.conf. If you fear for privacy, post this sensitive information inside a private message to me, and we can discuss solutions in public.

It's most probably a problem with the configuration. It usually is something very small. As long as all directories for DocumentRoot exists, Apache can read them, and the names can be resolved to IPs everything is fine. If Apache still doesn't do them it means there is a configuration problem.

[ghostknife]

Do you have any files inside /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/?

If so, paste them all separately, with their names prefixing them.

[digitalfrog]

it's all empty now, I consolidated the 3 files I had there in one httpd.conf (the one I posted above)


Do you have any files inside /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/?

If so, paste them all separately, with their names prefixing them.

[ghostknife]

OK. Remove those lines from httpd.conf, and put in apache2.conf. And post the full file in private again.

[digitalfrog]

Good news: It's working now
Bad news: I don't know what was wrong.

I cleaned up things and reworte them several times without success. Or at least I though. I cleaned my cache and .... now it works.

So one of the changes I've done fixed it, and it's likely to be one of ghostknife sugegstions.

So many thanks !

Ralph