Multiple websites

Off topic, was Lion Server tested at all? Any releases of it to develpeors berforehand? First time Apple has disapointed me. Too many errors to be tolerated.

I do know it was tested by the developer community but I don't think Apple was taking the feedback really seriously. From all I am reading, I'm starting to believe it was an after thought to Apple. They don't even have a PDF of the Advanced Server Administration guide available, just a web version. I think this goes with the $50 price tag.

add

NameVirtualHost *:80

to the top of the httpd.conf located in \etc\apache2\

restart apache

You can then host multiple websites and use the server app to manage them.

Any idea why adding NameVirtuaHost *:80 doesn't work for me? I had multiple websites that I hosted under SLS and can't get them to work here. Same DNS settings, etc. I add this line and it still doesn't redirect to my other sites.

The only thing that seems odd is when I type in the domain name for the alternate site, it appears as a red dot and does not turn into a green dot. What is that red/green dot testing? The fact that it is still red may be an indicator of what?

:443

terminal --- > use pico

/etc/apache2/

My sites are port 80, so your original line should work. A problem is that the I lose the line I enter into httpd.conf when I restart apache. I'm restarting by turning off and back on the web service through Server app. Is this incorrect?

Make sure you are adding it to the top very top --->

Should look like this...

NameVirtualHost *:80

#

# Mac OS ... .......

Turn off web. (wait until it completes).. turn on web.. - should work and should be able to add additonal sites

OK! This time it worked. The main difference is that I left a space between the NameVirtualHost line and the hash mark. Why that made a difference on the file being saved or changed, I don't know.

One other major thing I did was to move my website to the boot disc. I think I have an issue with how Server app is writing the path name to the website files I had stored on a difference disk. At one point along the way, I changed the name of that disc in the OS, but to the server, it appears to still have the old name. Where is the path for sites written out in the configuration?

Note that my users are on the non-boot disc, too, and the Server references their location fine...

Doh, this worked for a bit (30 minutes?) and it stopped working because the changes I made to the httpd.conf file were over-written. How do I stop that from happening?

I wish I could help. If you look above you'll see I'm having the same issue. Coming from SLS and correctly applying the suggestions here still doesn't work.

From what I can tell, your best bet is to completely avoid the "Web" panel. Any changes will whole-sale overwrite all the apache config files. Also, unlike previously, it appears that turning web services "Off" doesn't actually mean off. Because Apple depends on the web-server for new web-based config tools (e.g. Profile Manager) the On/Off switch just engages a different set of config rules that ignore all of the non-system websites.

To be sure you completely cycle apache I'd suggest "sudo apachectl restart" from the terminal.

If you use the hint marked as the correct answer on the first page of this discussion, you shouldn't have your settings overwritten by server.app, and you're still able to add sites through server.app. It's worked great for me so far

Stupid newbie question. Is "NameVirtualHost" supposed to be replaced with each domain that I am hosting?

Example:

joesplumbing.com *:80

midnightpizza.com *:80

designboy.net *:80

UPDATE: I found a work-around that has allowed me to get back 2 of my 3 virtual hosts.

Background: The "NameVirtualHost" fix alone was not working for me. I upgraded from Snow Leopard Server and no place I put NameVirtualHost would enable my <VirtualHost my.hostname.com:80> to work.

I read an apache.org website about VirtualHosts and DNS errors that says that a VirtualHost definition may be ignored if Apache cannot resolve the VirtualHost/ServerName to an IP address. My testing seems to indicate that my VirtualHost directives are just being skipped, so I tried putting in my static IP for the <VirtualHost> and then using the ServerName to specify the hostname for the virtual host. In addition, I added the 00000_MoreTestingRequired.conf file and added a NameVirtualHost line for each hostname.

Now several of my subdomains are working again! The only remaining issue is that I cannot specify separate virtual hosts for mainhostname.domain.com, domain.com, or www.domain.com.

So, maybe this is all a DNS issue?