Virtual hosting

localhost subdomains

[Jesdisciple]

I have 3 different sites which I'm building on my PC, and to make them compatible with their deployment servers I must use a PHP script which reads the site root from the first '.root' file found while ascending the directory tree. I would much rather let Apache handle this, but it's not cooperating.

I'm following this guide [help.ubuntu.com]; the mentioned Network Configuration Applet has a bug which forces me to directly edit /etc/hosts which begins like so:

127.0.0.1localhost
127.0.0.1 crosspoint.localhost
127.0.1.1Jesdisciple-laptop

That part works, but only makes the subdomain a synonym of localhost. The part that doesn't work is /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/crosspoint:

<VirtualHost *>
 DocumentRoot /home/coder/www/projects/crosspoint/
 ServerName crosspoint.localhost

 <Directory /home/chris/crosspoint/>
 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews +Includes
 AllowOverride All Limit
 Order allow,deny
 allow from all
 </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Any help would be most appreciated.

[edited by: encyclo at 1:42 am (utc) on June 4, 2009]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]

[encyclo]

I'm unsure what you're attempting to achieve with regards to your VirtualHost shown above as the path in the Directory section is outside the document root. Could you clarify?

If I understand the problem correctly, you need to run a PHP file before serving the requested page? If so, have you looked at php_value auto_prepend_file?:

php_value auto_prepend_file "/path/to/file.php"

[Jesdisciple]

Oops, I'm not sure where I got that idea... I was thinking Apache would automatically make a symlink. That was pretty dumb, so thanks for showing me. Unfortunately, it didn't change anything after a restart of Apache.

That directive would help with remembering to include the code, but it's not what I was asking; I still have to depend on the $ROOT variable to know where to find all my files. The current arrangement is just the alternative to a virtual host, adopted as a work-around.

<edit>Oh, here's something important. When I restart Apache, I get this error:

NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts

</edit>

<edit>I found a bunch of questions about that on Google, but I have a different situation. Some said the 000-default file apparently has a NameVirtualHost directive but no VirtualHosts tag could be found. Actually, ports.conf has the directive and 000-default has the tag.

Commenting the NameVirtualHost line as described here [v2kblog.blogspot.com] got rid of the warning but didn't fix anything.</edit>

Thanks!

[edited by: Jesdisciple at 4:39 am (utc) on June 4, 2009]

[Jesdisciple]

Alright, I got rid of the errors by adding a NameVirtualHost * line to 000-default, changing all my VirtualHosts to * instead of the default *:80, then commenting the directive in ports.conf. The vhost still doesn't work...

*jumps and shouts* I cleared my cache (suggested on another forum) and the problem disappeared.

[edited by: Jesdisciple at 6:07 am (utc) on June 4, 2009]