</div>
<div id="quickview"><ul id="toc"><li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#motivation">Motivation</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
-<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#simple">Simple Dynamic Virtual Hosts</a></li>
+<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#simple">Dynamic Virtual Hosts with
+mod_vhost_alias</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#homepages">A Virtually Hosted Homepages System</a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#combinations">Using Multiple Virtual
Hosting Systems on the Same Server</a></li>
Virtual Hosts Using <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code></a></li>
<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#homepages.rewrite">A
Homepages System Using <code>mod_rewrite</code></a></li>
-<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual
- Host Configuration File</a></li>
+<li><img alt="" src="../images/down.gif" /> <a href="#xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File</a></li>
</ul></div>
<div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<ol>
<li>Your configuration file is smaller, so Apache starts
- more quickly and uses less memory.</li>
+ more quickly and uses less memory. Perhaps more importantly, the
+ smaller configuration is easier to maintain, and leaves less room
+ for errors.</li>
<li>Adding virtual hosts is simply a matter of creating the
appropriate directories in the filesystem and entries in the
this can be a bad idea anyway, because of the <a href="fd-limits.html">number of file descriptors needed</a>.
It is better to <a href="../logs.html#piped">log to a pipe or a fifo</a>,
and arrange for the process at the other end to split up the log
- files into one per virtual host.</p>
+ files into one per virtual host. One example of such a process can
+ be found in the <a href="../programs/other.html#split-logfile">split-logfile</a>
+ utility.</p>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
used here is based on automatically inserting this information into the
pathname of the file that is used to satisfy the request. This
can be most easily done by using <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_vhost_alias.html">mod_vhost_alias</a></code>
- with Apache 2.0. Alternatively, <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> can be used.
- Both of these modules are disabled by default; you must enable
+ with Apache 2.0. Alternatively,
+ <a href="../rewrite/vhosts.html"><code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code> can
+ be used</a>.</p>
+ <p>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
+ <p>A couple of things need to be determined from the request in
+ order 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
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
+ <p>The other thing to determine 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 is used by the core module when
if any CGIs or SSI documents make use of it, they will get a
misleading value.</p>
+
+
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
-<h2><a name="simple" id="simple">Simple Dynamic Virtual Hosts</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="simple" id="simple">Dynamic Virtual Hosts with
+mod_vhost_alias</a></h2>
<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>
+ virtual host arrangement outlined in the <a href="#motivation">Motivation</a> section above
+ using <code>mod_vhost_alias</code>.</p>
<div class="example"><p><code>
# 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 />
+# using the split-logfile utility.<br />
LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
name that is inserted into the filename is then derived from
the IP address of the virtual host.</p>
+<p>See the <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_vhost_alias.html">mod_vhost_alias</a></code> documentation for more usage
+examples.</p>
+
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
<h2><a name="homepages" id="homepages">A Virtually Hosted Homepages System</a></h2>
</div><div class="top"><a href="#page-header"><img alt="top" src="../images/up.gif" /></a></div>
<div class="section">
-<h2><a name="xtra-conf" id="xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual
- Host Configuration File</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="xtra-conf" id="xtra-conf">Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File</a></h2>
<p>This arrangement uses more advanced <code class="module"><a href="../mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a></code>
features to work out the translation from virtual host to document
<ol>
<li>Your configuration file is smaller, so Apache starts
- more quickly and uses less memory.</li>
+ more quickly and uses less memory. Perhaps more importantly, the
+ smaller configuration is easier to maintain, and leaves less room
+ for errors.</li>
<li>Adding virtual hosts is simply a matter of creating the
appropriate directories in the filesystem and entries in the
href="fd-limits.html">number of file descriptors needed</a>.
It is better to <a href="../logs.html#piped">log to a pipe or a fifo</a>,
and arrange for the process at the other end to split up the log
- files into one per virtual host.</p>
+ files into one per virtual host. One example of such a process can
+ be found in the <a
+ href="../programs/other.html#split-logfile">split-logfile</a>
+ utility.</p>
</section>
used here is based on automatically inserting this information into the
pathname of the file that is used to satisfy the request. This
can be most easily done by using <module>mod_vhost_alias</module>
- with Apache 2.0. Alternatively, <module>mod_rewrite</module> can be used.
- Both of these modules are disabled by default; you must enable
+ with Apache 2.0. Alternatively,
+ <a href="../rewrite/vhosts.html"><module>mod_rewrite</module> can
+ be used</a>.</p>
+ <p>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
+ <p>A couple of things need to be determined from the request in
+ order 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
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
+ <p>The other thing to determine 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 is used by the core module when
if any CGIs or SSI documents make use of it, they will get a
misleading value.</p>
+ <!-- TODO: Is that true? I was pretty sure that mod_vhost_alias did
+ in fact set DOCUMENT_ROOT. Need to verify. rcb. -->
+
</section>
-<section id="simple"><title>Simple Dynamic Virtual Hosts</title>
+<section id="simple"><title>Dynamic Virtual Hosts with
+mod_vhost_alias</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>
+ href="#motivation">Motivation</a> section above
+ 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 />
+# using the split-logfile utility.<br />
LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
name that is inserted into the filename is then derived from
the IP address of the virtual host.</p>
+<p>See the <module>mod_vhost_alias</module> documentation for more usage
+examples.</p>
+
</section>
<section id="homepages"><title>A Virtually Hosted Homepages System</title>
</section>
-<section id="xtra-conf"><title>Using a Separate Virtual
- Host Configuration File</title>
+<section id="xtra-conf"><title>Using a Separate Virtual Host Configuration File</title>
<p>This arrangement uses more advanced <module>mod_rewrite</module>
features to work out the translation from virtual host to document
projects / apache / commitdiff