How do I setup “name based” virtual hosts using Ubuntu 12.04?
I have followed the instructions given at https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/httpd.html#http-configuration .
I've done the following…
cp default newsite
- replace “/var/www” with “/var/www/newsite” in newsite
- add “ServerName newsite.example.com” to newsite
After some research, I found a blog entry that stated I needed to disable the default site using a2dissite default
. After I did that, it worked. Is that correct? This is never mentioned in the Ubuntu server guide. The guide also includes this line…
“The default virtual host has no ServerName directive specified, so it
will respond to all requests that do not match a ServerName directive
in another virtual host.”
Which seems to imply that both the default site and others can co-exist.
I'm running a fresh install of 12.04 Server and have reloaded the apache config each time I made an adjustment.
In summary… after adding a new file under /etc/apache2/sites-available (an altered copy of the “default” file with the ServerName directive added) and the corresponding symlink under /etc/apache2/sites-enabled, is it necessary to disable or rename the default site symlink in order for the new site to function? The documentation and one answer given below seems to infer that it is not necessary to do so, but if so, what have I done wrong? Using the config below, when trying to access newsite.example.com I get the default site.
/etc/apache2/sites-available$ cat default
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
<Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
/etc/apache2/sites-available$ cat newsite
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www/newsite
ServerName newsite.example.com
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/newsite/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled# ls -l
root@sandbox:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled# ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Mar 18 09:56 000-default -> ../sites-available/default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Mar 7 13:36 newsite -> ../sites-available/newsite
Best Answer
This is more of an apache configuration question, than a Ubuntu one.
Yes, you may run multiple virtual servers on one host, each serving separate content, provided that they all map (e.g. via DNS) to the same server.
The official documentation on how to create virtual servers (version 2.2 but this feature hasn't fundamentally changed between versions) can be found here:
The short answer is you need to:
This is done by adding a virtual host clause to some apache config file, e.g. under /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-add-my-virtual-hosts (name designed specifically to precede the 000-default name in alphabetic order)
Note that you may also need to add links from /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ to /etc/apache2/sites-available if the site you need is already in the latter but not the former.
EDIT 1:
After reading the man page for a2dissite, it becomes clear that all it does is removing the symlink from /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/. The key is to understand that the order in which these configs are processed can affect the end result. The default site is called 000-default in order to be loaded first. If it matches all sites, i.e. acts as a 'anything else' wildcard, then you won't see the others. Try renaming the link to have a higher number like 999-default so it is loaded last (after the other sites matched).
EDIT 2: To your updated question: yes, it is necessary to rename or delete the default site because its config file name starts with '000' making it load first and 'take-over' due to the wildcard matching. I suppose the documentation can be improved on this point.
EDIT 3: The order in which server names appear, its importance and more is documented on this apache page in the section Name-based vhost One of the relevant sentences says:
and later under Observations: