I bought a domain and registered it on a dns server. But I wonder how my web server know whether the coming request is from my domain. E.g. someone registered his domain on my server too. Obviously apache should reject other domain's request. I just wanna know more details about how a web server (like apache) detect this. Does it simply set in the config file (maybe ServerName?) and do some string comparison?
Short answer: By default, if another person points their domain to your website, by default the webpages that are sent to their computer are the same webpages you use for www.yourdomain.com. You can also program your webserver to deny/redirect requests from other domains.
Long answer (I recommand you read):
A common newbie misconception is that domains are "TIED" to a web server. However, that is not true. They are completely different and somewhat unrelated. A domain is just shorthand for an IP address that correlates to your web server. An IP address is really what is TIED with your web server.
For example:
www.example.com could 'resolve'/correlate to 1.1.1.1
and
www.randomdomain.com could also resolve to 1.1.1.1
If 1.1.1.1 is the ip address your web server is correlated to, THEN these requests will both get sent to your web server.
Now, if you think about it, with this logic, you should be able to access your web server by just typing in 1.1.1.1 That is true!
Real world example:
www.google.com goes to Google
172.217.6.78 also goes to Google because 172.217.6.78 is one of the web servers google.com will correlate/resolve to. Go ahead and type 172.217.6.78 into your web browser. It will take you to google.com.
DNS servers point your domain to the IP address of your web server.
On your webserver:
Your server will run a software that will respond to requests it gets from the outside internet. This software will usually know how to respond to this requests using the correct syntax and also be able to handle multiple requests at the same time. When this software gets a request, it will load a file (that you specify) and send it to the user/client.
Common examples of this software include Apache (most famous/popular - runs like 40% of all websites you browse including facebook.com) and nginx (becoming more popular).
The default config of an Apache/nginx/etc web server is to serve that user (at port 80) the documents that are in the 'www' folder. However, (for Apache) if you would like to serve multiple domains on one web server (www.example.com & login.example.com), you would usually create virtual hosts. Creating virtual hosts can be done by editing your Apache configuration file. (If you're hosting on GoDaddy/namecheap or something similar, you won't have access to this.)
An example of a basic virtual host could be:
<VirtualHost *:80> #80 for port 80 - the standard port for unencrypted web traffic
ServerName www.yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /where/your/web/files/are/located
<VirtualHost>
You could then create another virtual host to reject/forward another domain's traffic
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.randomotherdomain.com
#here, you could either serve new content to this domain using "DocumentRoot" or you can forward all traffic to your website
Redirect / http://www.yourdomain.com
<VirtualHost>
However, by default, if another person points their domain to your website, by default the webpages that are sent to their computer are the same webpages you use for www.yourdomain.com
Related
I have hosting with godaddy with a private IP address. I am able to access my websites and others via the domain name, but not via IP Address.
I am now trying to access the HTTP via port 80 but it gives an error that the website is not setup.
Are there any workarounds on turning allowing accessing the website and other folders through the IP address over http?
This sounds to me like you were on a managed webpack that grants you access to the to-be-served content but not to the webserver or its config itself.
What you are experiencing there is an effect of a technique called virtual-hosts in which multiple sites are tied to one IP address. For this to work in the realm of HTTP, the Host header got introduced in HTTP/1.1. It allows clients to send a domain name for which they want to receive content.
If you request a raw IP, though, the Host header won't look like Host: example.com but rather like Host: 123.45.67.89. The server will not be able to associate a domainname with this as it is unlikely to be found elsewhere in the request. Therefore, it will be forced to serve content out of its default document directory which usually contains further documentations regarding the further configuration of the webserver in question. Linux distributions like to add additional informations specific to them. Check if you see any mentioning of e.g. Debian, RedHat, or Centos.
I am not sure if this is fixable. Usually webservers like Apache support IP-based virtual hosts. If a masshoster like godaddy is really going to address this is uncertain. Try to contact their support and see.
1]If you are using host headers, make sure you have a DNS entry pointing your URL to your IP
2]Telnet port 80 from a machine outside your network.If it fails then check with your ISP that port 80 should not block in firewall.
Is it possible to run multiple apache sites on the same IP, domain and port (meaning the <VirtualHost> tags are exactly identical and no ServerName is given) while using SSL (not sure whether SSL makes a difference here)?
I would like to separate my web services into files in etc/apache2/sites-available to be able to activate or deactivate them on demand. Basically Apache should just take all files and string them together internally, but leave me the possibility to a2dissite certain parts.
Further clarification:
By "sites", I mean files in the etc/apache2/sites-available directory. "Web services" in this context are certain application like phpMyAdmin or an Etherpad which run on the Apache and whose configuration (e.g. Alias or ProxyPass) I want to write into its own configuration file ("site"),
The short answer is no.
SSL operates at a level between TCP and HTTP. But the virtual host name is sent via HTTP. So how does SSL know which certificate to use for a virtual host?
There is a way to do it - basically start up the HTTP over TCP then switch to SSL after the virtual host name (in the Host header) is sent. However this is complex, error prone and generally considered a bad idea.
Best practice is to have one IP per SSL. One machine can have multitple IP addresses, even a single network port can have mulitple IP addresses.
Ok, so bit of noob question - having one of those days.
I have set up a home apache web server on Ubuntu. I have configured vhosts as I want to host multiple websites. These work fine in the local browser, e.g.
http://site1
http://site2
both display their various contents.
For the server side of things, I've configured port forwarding on my router to send all port 80 requests to the server IP.
When I go to an external browser and type in my servers external IP address I get the standard apache "It works!" message. When I type in ipaddress/site1 I get 404. The site1 is not in the standard apache default directory, I have it in home/username/Sites/site1 folder and httpd.conf file knows this.
How is it I can access these site1 and site2 sites externally?
Cheers
Just as you would do in your local browser. So typing in http://site1 would lead you to the first site. This is based on an assumption though, which is that you put the http://site1 address in your /etc/hosts file. When your computer looks up an URL, it first checks the hosts file (and your case will find the correct IP address there) and next will ask a global mechanism for the address.
The reason why it doesnt find anything at "ipaddress/site1" is because of the vhosts configuration. This teel Apache serve the content of a folder somewhere on your server as a separate hostname, e.g. http://site1. If you're requesting "ipadress/site1", you're actually telling Apache to look in the folder "site1" in its first root it encounters in your Vhost configuration.
I have a WAMP home web server up and running on a static IP and registered a domain with Namecheap, but I'm a bit shaky with DNS. At first I used URL Redirect and pointed it to my IP. This meant that when you typed in the domain (like example.com) it just redirected you right to my IP, replacing the domain name with it in the address bar. Now I'm trying to get the domain to show instead of the IP in the address bar, which I'm struggling to understand exactly how to do.
The latest thing I've tried which many people say to do is instead of using URL Redirect to use the A (Address) record type and point it to my IP, which I thought would finally fix my problems. Of course after 15 min or so when it all got updated I'm getting a 400 Bad Request with nginx under it in Firefox, and a blank page in Chrome. Now I'm getting blank pages in both. Did I do something wrong here? Do I need to edit something on the web server such as httpd.conf? Am I going at this completely wrong?
Yes you should do away with the redirect and instead create an "A record". The sub-domain entry would typically be, but is not restricted to "www". The record type "A" and destination/target would be your external IP address. Once you update this record it may take several hours before you notice it taking effecting, upon where on people typing your URL would be directed to your web server.
You will need to forward port 80 on your router to the server hosting WAMP.
Finally the WAMP server should be provided with your domain name so it knows which site to load. If use the VirtualHost file this will allow you to host multiple domains on your web server. To do this...
Uncomment the following line so it appears like below in your Apache httpd.conf, to allow Apache to use virutal hosts
# Virtual hosts
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Then locate the httpd-vhosts.conf file, should be found in your WAMP installation location, such as C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache*version_number*\conf\extra\
Add an entry for your site, altering the details to your own domain name and website location.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.stackoverflow.com
ServerAlias stackoverflow.com
DocumentRoot "C:/websites/stackoverflow/"
ErrorLog "C:/websites/stackoverflow/logs/error.log"
CustomLog "C:/websites/stackoverflow/logs/access.log" common
</VirtualHost>
Now restart your WAMP server and give it a whirl.
Tip: If your server won't start after these changes, check that you have created the folder structure for the log files!
Solution described here could resolve this issue.
Most of the free dynamic dns providers, allow acquiring more than one free host name. If allowed you can solve the problem by getting a second name, e.g., mysite2.somefree.org.
Now, go and configure your free domain names in the dashboard of free provider in the following way (assume your IP is 188.165.15.29 and your server's listening to port 8085).
redirect mysite1.somefree.org to mysite2.somefree.org:8085
redirect mysite2.somefree.org to your dynamic IP, say, to 188.165.15.29
This also works when you are using Apache httpd server alone, not being part of WAMP. You do not need to tweak virtual host or any part of your server. You only configure inbound direction.
Use Forward with masking where you registered your domain. mine is GoDaddy.
in the forward settings, you will see this at bottom of the page. click Forward with masking and add the title you want them to see in the address bar of the browser when they go to your site. instead of showing your IP address
I recently installed business objects software on tomcat 6. I have 2 domains - domain1 and domain2. This software allows access to two of its applications via these URLS:
xxxxxhttp://myservername.domain1:8080/BO/APP1 and xxxxhttp://myservername.domain1:8080/BO/APP2
Instead of these urls, I would like the end users to access these apps via something like http://bobj.domain2.com:8080/BO/APP1 and http://bobj.domain2.com:8080/BO/APP2.
I cannot figure out how to accomplish that. I have looked into the option of http redirect (not good because the destination address shows up in the address bar), domain forwarding (not sure if it would work with multiple applications and forwarding from one domain to another) and also using apache tomcat with mod_jk by using virtual hosts (not sure if it is possible when forwarding from one domain to a sub domain in another domain) ??
Experts, please advise as to what would be my best option and how to accomplish.
thanks a bunch
There must be a DNS entry for bobj.domain2.com to point to your IP address. Then adding a ServerAlias directive to Apache should do the trick. You can also use wildcards, e.g. DNS entry for *.domain2.com, and ServerAlias *.domain2.com.