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<manualpage metafile="mass.xml.meta">
<parentdocument href="./">Virtual Hosts</parentdocument>
   <title>Dynamically configured mass virtual hosting</title>

<summary>

    <p>This document describes how to efficiently serve an
    arbitrary number of virtual hosts with Apache. <!--

                Written by Tony Finch (fanf@demon.net) (dot@dotat.at).

                Some examples were derived from Ralf S. Engleschall's document
                    http://www.engelschall.com/pw/apache/rewriteguide/

                Some suggestions were made by Brian Behlendorf.

                -->
    </p>

</summary>

<section id="motivation"><title>Motivation</title>

    <p>The techniques described here are of interest if your
    <code>httpd.conf</code> contains many
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> sections that are
    substantially the same, for example:</p>

<example>
NameVirtualHost 111.22.33.44<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName                 www.customer-1.com<br />
    DocumentRoot        /www/hosts/www.customer-1.com/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/hosts/www.customer-1.com/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName                 www.customer-2.com<br />
    DocumentRoot        /www/hosts/www.customer-2.com/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/hosts/www.customer-2.com/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;<br />
# blah blah blah<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName                 www.customer-N.com<br />
    DocumentRoot        /www/hosts/www.customer-N.com/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/hosts/www.customer-N.com/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
</example>

    <p>The basic idea is to replace all of the static
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> configuration with a mechanism
    that works it out dynamically. This has a number of
    advantages:</p>

    <ol>
      <li>Your configuration file is smaller so Apache starts
      faster and uses less memory.</li>

      <li>Adding virtual hosts is simply a matter of creating the
      appropriate directories in the filesystem and entries in the
      DNS - you don't need to reconfigure or restart Apache.</li>
    </ol>

    <p>The main disadvantage is that you cannot have a different
    log file for each virtual host; however if you have very many
    virtual hosts then doing this is dubious anyway because it eats
    file descriptors. It is better to log to a pipe or a fifo and
    arrange for the process at the other end to distribute the logs
    to the customers (it can also accumulate statistics, etc.).</p>

</section>

<section id="overview"><title>Overview</title>

    <p>A virtual host is defined by two pieces of information: its
    IP address, and the contents of the <code>Host:</code> header
    in the HTTP request. The dynamic mass virtual hosting technique
    is based on automatically inserting this information into the
    pathname of the file that is used to satisfy the request. This
    is done most easily using <module>mod_vhost_alias</module>,
    but if you are using a version of Apache up to 1.3.6 then you
    must use <module>mod_rewrite</module>.
    Both of these modules are disabled by default; you must enable
    one of them when configuring and building Apache if you want to
    use this technique.</p>

    <p>A couple of things need to be `faked' to make the dynamic
    virtual host look like a normal one. The most important is the
    server name which is used by Apache to generate
    self-referential URLs, etc. It is configured with the
    <code>ServerName</code> directive, and it is available to CGIs
    via the <code>SERVER_NAME</code> environment variable. The
    actual value used at run time is controlled by the <directive
    module="core">UseCanonicalName</directive>
    setting. With <code>UseCanonicalName Off</code> the server name
    comes from the contents of the <code>Host:</code> header in the
    request. With <code>UseCanonicalName DNS</code> it comes from a
    reverse DNS lookup of the virtual host's IP address. The former
    setting is used for name-based dynamic virtual hosting, and the
    latter is used for IP-based hosting. If Apache cannot work out
    the server name because there is no <code>Host:</code> header
    or the DNS lookup fails then the value configured with
    <code>ServerName</code> is used instead.</p>

    <p>The other thing to `fake' is the document root (configured
    with <code>DocumentRoot</code> and available to CGIs via the
    <code>DOCUMENT_ROOT</code> environment variable). In a normal
    configuration this setting is used by the core module when
    mapping URIs to filenames, but when the server is configured to
    do dynamic virtual hosting that job is taken over by another
    module (either <code>mod_vhost_alias</code> or
    <code>mod_rewrite</code>) which has a different way of doing
    the mapping. Neither of these modules is responsible for
    setting the <code>DOCUMENT_ROOT</code> environment variable so
    if any CGIs or SSI documents make use of it they will get a
    misleading value.</p>

</section>

<section id="simple"><title>Simple dynamic virtual hosts</title>

    <p>This extract from <code>httpd.conf</code> implements the
    virtual host arrangement outlined in the <a
    href="#motivation">Motivation</a> section above, but in a
    generic fashion using <code>mod_vhost_alias</code>.</p>

<example>
# get the server name from the Host: header<br />
UseCanonicalName Off<br />
<br />
# this log format can be split per-virtual-host based on the first field<br />
LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
# include the server name in the filenames used to satisfy requests<br />
VirtualDocumentRoot /www/hosts/%0/docs<br />
VirtualScriptAlias  /www/hosts/%0/cgi-bin
</example>

    <p>This configuration can be changed into an IP-based virtual
    hosting solution by just turning <code>UseCanonicalName
    Off</code> into <code>UseCanonicalName DNS</code>. The server
    name that is inserted into the filename is then derived from
    the IP address of the virtual host.</p>

</section>

<section id="homepages"><title>A virtually hosted homepages system</title>

    <p>This is an adjustment of the above system tailored for an
    ISP's homepages server. Using a slightly more complicated
    configuration we can select substrings of the server name to
    use in the filename so that e.g. the documents for
    <code>www.user.isp.com</code> are found in
    <code>/home/user/</code>. It uses a single <code>cgi-bin</code>
    directory instead of one per virtual host.</p>

<example>
# all the preliminary stuff is the same as above, then<br />
<br />
# include part of the server name in the filenames<br />
VirtualDocumentRoot /www/hosts/%2/docs<br />
<br />
# single cgi-bin directory<br />
ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/std-cgi/<br />
</example>

    <p>There are examples of more complicated
    <code>VirtualDocumentRoot</code> settings in the
    <module>mod_vhost_alias</module> documentation.</p>

</section>

<section id="combinations"><title>Using more than
    one virtual hosting system on the same server</title>

    <p>With more complicated setups you can use Apache's normal
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> directives to control the
    scope of the various virtual hosting configurations. For
    example, you could have one IP address for homepages customers
    and another for commercial customers with the following setup.
    This can of course be combined with conventional
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> configuration sections.</p>

<example>
UseCanonicalName Off<br />
<br />
LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
<br />
&lt;Directory /www/commercial&gt;<br />
<indent>
    Options FollowSymLinks<br />
    AllowOverride All<br />
</indent>
&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;Directory /www/homepages&gt;<br />
<indent>
    Options FollowSymLinks<br />
    AllowOverride None<br />
</indent>
&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName www.commercial.isp.com<br />
    <br />
    CustomLog logs/access_log.commercial vcommon<br />
    <br />
    VirtualDocumentRoot /www/commercial/%0/docs<br />
    VirtualScriptAlias  /www/commercial/%0/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.45&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName www.homepages.isp.com<br />
    <br />
    CustomLog logs/access_log.homepages vcommon<br />
    <br />
    VirtualDocumentRoot /www/homepages/%0/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias         /cgi-bin/ /www/std-cgi/<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
</example>

</section>

<section id="ipbased"><title>More efficient IP-based virtual hosting</title>

    <p>After <a href="#simple">the first example</a> I noted that
    it is easy to turn it into an IP-based virtual hosting setup.
    Unfortunately that configuration is not very efficient because
    it requires a DNS lookup for every request. This can be avoided
    by laying out the filesystem according to the IP addresses
    themselves rather than the corresponding names and changing the
    logging similarly. Apache will then usually not need to work
    out the server name and so incur a DNS lookup.</p>

<example>
# get the server name from the reverse DNS of the IP address<br />
UseCanonicalName DNS<br />
<br />
# include the IP address in the logs so they may be split<br />
LogFormat "%A %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
# include the IP address in the filenames<br />
VirtualDocumentRootIP /www/hosts/%0/docs<br />
VirtualScriptAliasIP  /www/hosts/%0/cgi-bin<br />
</example>

</section>

<section id="oldversion"><title>Using older versions of Apache</title>

    <p>The examples above rely on <code>mod_vhost_alias</code>
    which appeared after version 1.3.6. If you are using a version
    of Apache without <code>mod_vhost_alias</code> then you can
    implement this technique with <code>mod_rewrite</code> as
    illustrated below, but only for Host:-header-based virtual
    hosts.</p>

    <p>In addition there are some things to beware of with logging.
    Apache 1.3.6 is the first version to include the
    <code>%V</code> log format directive; in versions 1.3.0 - 1.3.3
    the <code>%v</code> option did what <code>%V</code> does;
    version 1.3.4 has no equivalent. In all these versions of
    Apache the <code>UseCanonicalName</code> directive can appear
    in <code>.htaccess</code> files which means that customers can
    cause the wrong thing to be logged. Therefore the best thing to
    do is use the <code>%{Host}i</code> directive which logs the
    <code>Host:</code> header directly; note that this may include
    <code>:port</code> on the end which is not the case for
    <code>%V</code>.</p>

</section>

<section id="simple.rewrite"><title>Simple dynamic
    virtual hosts using <code>mod_rewrite</code></title>

    <p>This extract from <code>httpd.conf</code> does the same
    thing as <a href="#simple">the first example</a>. The first
    half is very similar to the corresponding part above but with
    some changes for backward compatibility and to make the
    <code>mod_rewrite</code> part work properly; the second half
    configures <code>mod_rewrite</code> to do the actual work.</p>

    <p>There are a couple of especially tricky bits: By default,
    <code>mod_rewrite</code> runs before the other URI translation
    modules (<code>mod_alias</code> etc.) so if they are used then
    <code>mod_rewrite</code> must be configured to accommodate
    them. Also, some magic must be performed to do a
    per-dynamic-virtual-host equivalent of
    <code>ScriptAlias</code>.</p>

<example>
# get the server name from the Host: header<br />
UseCanonicalName Off<br />
<br />
# splittable logs<br />
LogFormat "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
&lt;Directory /www/hosts&gt;<br />
<indent>
    # ExecCGI is needed here because we can't force<br />
    # CGI execution in the way that ScriptAlias does<br />
    Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI<br />
</indent>
&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
<br />
# now for the hard bit<br />
<br />
RewriteEngine On<br />
<br />
# a ServerName derived from a Host: header may be any case at all<br />
RewriteMap  lowercase  int:tolower<br />
<br />
## deal with normal documents first:<br />
# allow Alias /icons/ to work - repeat for other aliases<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/icons/<br />
# allow CGIs to work<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/cgi-bin/<br />
# do the magic<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$  /www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/docs/$1<br />
<br />
## and now deal with CGIs - we have to force a handler<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/cgi-bin/<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$  /www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/cgi-bin/$1  [H=cgi-script]<br />
<br />
# that's it!
</example>

</section>

<section id="homepages.rewrite"><title>A
    homepages system using <code>mod_rewrite</code></title>

    <p>This does the same thing as <a href="#homepages">the second
    example</a>.</p>

<example>
RewriteEngine on<br />
<br />
RewriteMap   lowercase  int:tolower<br />
<br />
# allow CGIs to work<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/cgi-bin/<br />
<br />
# check the hostname is right so that the RewriteRule works<br />
RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^www\.[a-z-]+\.isp\.com$<br />
<br />
# concatenate the virtual host name onto the start of the URI<br />
# the [C] means do the next rewrite on the result of this one<br />
RewriteRule  ^(.+)  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}$1  [C]<br />
<br />
# now create the real file name<br />
RewriteRule  ^www\.([a-z-]+)\.isp\.com/(.*) /home/$1/$2<br />
<br />
# define the global CGI directory<br />
ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/std-cgi/
</example>

</section>

<section id="xtra-conf"><title>Using a separate virtual
    host configuration file</title>

    <p>This arrangement uses more advanced <code>mod_rewrite</code>
    features to get the translation from virtual host to document
    root from a separate configuration file. This provides more
    flexibility but requires more complicated configuration.</p>

    <p>The <code>vhost.map</code> file contains something like
    this:</p>

<example>
www.customer-1.com  /www/customers/1<br />
www.customer-2.com  /www/customers/2<br />
# ...<br />
www.customer-N.com  /www/customers/N<br />
</example>

    <p>The <code>http.conf</code> contains this:</p>

<example>
RewriteEngine on<br />
<br />
RewriteMap   lowercase  int:tolower<br />
<br />
# define the map file<br />
RewriteMap   vhost      txt:/www/conf/vhost.map<br />
<br />
# deal with aliases as above<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               !^/icons/<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               !^/cgi-bin/<br />
RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^(.+)$<br />
# this does the file-based remap<br />
RewriteCond  ${vhost:%1}                  ^(/.*)$<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$                      %1/docs/$1<br />
<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               ^/cgi-bin/<br />
RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^(.+)$<br />
RewriteCond  ${vhost:%1}                  ^(/.*)$<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$                      %1/cgi-bin/$1 [H=cgi-script]
</example>

</section>
</manualpage>