Questions[namevirtualhost](server)

We have a server running seven domains/subdomains. To try to go as minimal as possible here I'll include four of them.

1. example.com
2. www.example.com
3. dwf.example.com
4. chris.example.com

The server works great 90% of the time, but occasionally we get a larger number of requests and the database server goes down. This then max's out the apache connections, because all the db connections are waiting to timeout. All well and good, we force a restart on the DB, and connections come back up. However, the requests are then coming to the dfw.example.com configuration. That deployment doesn't have our codebase, which is a big issue and I don't understand why that is happening. It also consistently goes to that deployment when this happens and never any of the other 5 we have.

From the documentation I read, I thought Apache read through the httpd.conf file and looked for the first NamedVirtualHost match:

Now when a request arrives, the server will first check if it is using an IP address that matches the NameVirtualHost. If it is, then it will look at each <VirtualHost> section with a matching IP address and try to find one where the ServerName or ServerAlias matches the requested hostname. If it finds one, then it uses the configuration for that server. If no matching virtual host is found, then the first listed virtual host that matches the IP address will be used.

We are running Apache 2.2.15.

Parts I think are relevant from the httpd.conf file:

Listen 80
Listen 255.255.255.255:443

...

ServerName www.example.com

... (this is the exact order, www (https/http), dfw, then all other versions)

NameVirtualHost www.example.com:80
<VirtualHost    www.example.com:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/www.example.com
    ServerName www.example.com
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    LogLevel notice
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/www.example.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/www.example.com/access.log w3c_extended
</VirtualHost>

NameVirtualHost www.example.com:443
<VirtualHost www.example.com:443>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/www.example.com
    ServerName www.example.com
    #certificate stuff
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    LogLevel notice
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/www.example.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/www.example.com/access.log w3c_extended 
</VirtualHost>

NameVirtualHost dfw.example.com:80
<VirtualHost    dfw.example.com:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/dfw.example.com
    ServerName dfw.example.com
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    LogLevel notice
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/dfw.example.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/dfw.example.com/access.log w3c_extended
</VirtualHost>
NameVirtualHost chris.example.com:443
<VirtualHost    chris.example.com:443>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/chris.example.com
#cert stuff
    ServerName chris.example.com
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    LogLevel notice
    ErrorLog  /var/log/httpd/chris.example.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/chris.example.com/access.log w3c_extended
</VirtualHost>

NameVirtualHost chris.example.com:80
<VirtualHost    chris.example.com:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/chris.example.com
    ServerName chris.example.com
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    LogLevel notice
    RewriteLog /home/chris/writinglog.log
    RewriteLogLevel 8
    ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/chris.example.com/error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/httpd/chris.example.com/access.log w3c_extended
    CheckSpelling on
</VirtualHost>

Doing a sudo service httpd restart gets the correct deployment serving again.

Output from apachectl -S:

VirtualHost configuration:
[IPV6ADDRESS]:443 is a NameVirtualHost
         default server chris.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1077)
         port 443 namevhost chris.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1077)
[IPV6ADDRESS]:80 is a NameVirtualHost
         default server chris.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1095)
         port 80 namevhost chris.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1095)
         port 80 namevhost cory.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1128)
IPV4Address:80      is a NameVirtualHost
         default server www.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1035)
         port 80 namevhost dfw.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1065)
        port 80 namevhost www.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1035)
         port 80 namevhost chris.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1095)
IPV4Address:443     is a NameVirtualHost
         default server www.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1047)
         port 443 namevhost www.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1047)
         port 443 namevhost chris.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:1077)
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
_default_:443          www.example.com (/etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf:74)
Syntax OK

Tried navigating to my server today and noticed that NONE of my hosted websites are loading...even if I enter the ip and try to hit the default page I get nothing. I hadn't touched the server since it was working properly so I'm not sure what has happened. I made a couple little changes and tried to restart apache and whenever I try I get this:

jcmo:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Restarting web server: apache2[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:443 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:443 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Mon Jul 16 21:13:10 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts
 failed!

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

I've just followed this tutorial on setting up name-based virtulization in Apache, and it worked really well.

The tutorial basically got you to add a config file to sites-available called yourdomain.com, and then link it to sites-enabled.

By default, apache includes two site config files in sites-available, default and defualt-ssl.

Should you edit these files or remove the link form the sites-enabled directory?

After playing around with this (locally), I realised that by default the default site points to your root /var/www directory, and so if someone goes to the IP of your server directly, could they not then see all the vhosts and other directories in /var/www, unless the default vhost config is changed to point to a different directory, or remvoed from sites-enabled?

I'm just wondering what is commonly done with the default site if the server is being used for name-based virtualization?

Sorry if I got some of this incorrect as I'm quite new to running my own web server.

I'm trying to set up multiple domains with virtual hosts in Apache2. I'm currently getting a "Could not connect" error when I try to browse to my site, and whenever I try to restart Apache2, I get an error about "no listening sockets available, shutting down Unable to open logs".

Originally, after configuring apache2.conf and my /apache2/sites-enabled/domain1.com, I was getting a 500 server error and a warn from apache2 that "NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts". Then I commented out an extra (I think) NameVirtualHost *:80 in the ports.conf file, and now the cannot connect and no sockets error.

Here's what's at the bottom of my apache2.conf:

 NameVirtualHost *:80
#<VirtualHost *:80>                                                            

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
    NameVirtualHost *:443
</IfModule>

And my /apache2/sites-enabled/domain1.com:

          # domain: domain1.com
          # public: /home/demo/public_html/domain1.com/

<VirtualHost *:80>

 # Admin email, Server Name (domain name) and any aliases
 ServerAdmin [email protected]
 ServerName  domain1.com
 ServerAlias domain1.com


 # Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
 DirectoryIndex index.html
 DocumentRoot /home/demo/public_html/domain1.com/public


 # Custom log file locations
 LogLevel warn
 ErrorLog  /home/demo/public_html/domain1.com/log/error.log
 CustomLog /home/demo/public_html/domain1.com/log/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

And finally, my ports.conf:

#NameVirtualHost *:80                                                            
#Listen 80                                                                     

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
    # If you add NameVirtualHost *:443 here, you will also have to change      
    # the VirtualHost statement in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl    
    # to <VirtualHost *:443>                                                   
    # Server Name Indication for SSL named virtual hosts is currently not      
    # supported by MSIE on Windows XP.                                         
        Listen 443
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_gnutls.c>
    Listen 443
</IfModule>

I appreciate any insight that can be offered.

What is the difference between "NameVirtualHost *" and "NameVirtualHost 0.0.0.0"? Both seem to be implementing name-based virtualhosts, both seem to work. How does "0.0.0.0" become a wildcard?