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Shannon
Asked: 2011-05-15 11:03:16 +0800 CST

Specifying default vhost on Apache2 with multiple vhost files

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I have set up a Ubuntu Linux VPS with Moonshine (a Ruby on Rails deployment plugin/script) and hosting multiple sites on it (despite Moonshine being intended for one site/application), so far working well.

One little issue that I have with my server is that whenever I accidentally set up a vhost wrong or a vhost is not found, the browser is directed to the very first vhost site that I set up. Which concerns me because I don't want one site accidentally being associate with the other in case of some error or issue; what I would "rather" have it do is direct to some default place (like /var/www/default/oops.html) if there are any issues.

I've Googled the subject and the common answer is that order is everything in the vhost files, except I think that is assuming I have ALL my vhosts in one file. Instead, my vhosts are set up separately in the sites-available/enabled folders of apache (mydomain1.com, mydomain2.com, etc) and 'a2ensite' respectively, so how would I go about "ordering" these? (One of these files is a 'default' file, but doesn't seem to do anything.)

One other thing I saw was specify a default host in httpd.conf, except when I attempted to do so, it completely redirected ALL my vhost sites to the default.

ubuntu apache-2.2 virtualhost

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    On Ubuntu your vhosts will be loaded via Include statements within the /etc/apache2/apache2.conf configuration file. You're right that Apache treats the first VirtualHost it finds as the default if it can't match a request but just because the VirtualHost directives aren't in the same file doesn't stop you from ordering them.

    Down the bottom of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf you can find the line:

    # Include the virtual host configurations:
    Include sites-enabled/

    This is where Apache is picking up your VirtualHosts specified in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ so you've got two options:

    Put an include to add a new VirtualHost above the above Include line in the apache2.cnf config file.

    Or order the files in sites-enabled. I'm not sure on the exact mechanism Apache uses to read these files but I'm assuming it's alphabetical with numbers first (in the same way ls would list a directory). This is hinted at by the included default site on Ubuntu being called 000-default. So based on that, to create a new default VirtualHost, you need to create a new VirtualHost config in sites-available called (for instance) 00_default_vhost.conf and then enable it with a2ensite.

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