iis and apache combination on real server for 403 - apache

We have a win2003 server that run both IIS 7 and apache (using wamp server 2.2).
We put on both server a page named test.html that show us a message that say "You are on IIS page" and "You are on WAMP page" to show us if everything is working correctly.
Both running real great locally. IIS is listening on port 80 and apache on port 8082. The problems come remotly. Both services are running and wamp is fully online (green icon + "put online" option activate).
Locally, on the server, doing http://localhost/test.html and http://localhost:8082/test.html show the correct pages. If we replace localhost by real IP address (for example purpose, let say http://10.2.5.16/test.html and http://10.2.5.16:8082/test.html), still work. (not actual address but address used for real is the same used by dns web service)
Remotly, from any other PC, doing http://10.2.5.16/test.html and http://10.2.5.16:8082/test.html, the first give us the website normally, the second give us a HTTP 403 FORBIDEN (tried using both htaccess and windows permission, still have 403). The same way, using http://www.ourdomain.com/test.html and http://www.ourdomain.com:8082/test.html give us the exact same result (first ok, second 403)
Is it possible to make it work correctly?
Thanks in advance.
edit: Just to add to the solution :
the firewall was blocking me, add the wamp on this port allowed
in my configuration, i had in my directory statement Require local, which needed to be set to Require all granted
for the rest, the solution was pretty it.
Thanks again.

The fact that you can get to the sites locally tells me both servers are setup correctly and listening on respective ports.
Upon further questions, the OP indicated that the Servername Directive, is pointing to localhost and it should be changed as.
ServerName localhost:8082
To
ServerName example.com:8082 # or add "ServerAlias example.com:8082" to your existing.
Where as example.com is your site DNS. Then in your [System32\drivers\etc\hosts] point that DNS to the ip of your Remote host.
403 is happening because the request from the remote is not matched against any Servername or ServerAlias and it falls to the default handler which normally has stricket permissions. If you look closely in logs(/logs/apache/access.log), there should be something about "access denied by server configuration /somelocation like your default DocRoot"
If you make request for http://example.com and you have correct ip in your hostfile, you can trace what happens to that request in the remote host and where it ends up(firewalls, Apache etc). Apache is good at logging and you just need to find relevant log entries!

Related

how do my web server know the domain is mine?

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

Apache Configuration for Local Server

I have a development server running Centos 7 I've setup in my living room. As of now I'm not using a domain, my ISP blocks port 80 so I've got Apache listening on port 8080.
I have a few different sites on here I've been playing with. One of them is a redmine installation, another is wordpress, and the other has dolphin on it. I can get any one of these 3 to run normally off the root ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080 but when I try to setup an alias it points to the server's local ip. This works great from home, but I can't access them anywhere else.
I've setup a virtual host configuration in apache like this:
<VirtualHost *:8080>
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress
Alias /wordpress /var/www/html/wordpress
</VirtualHost>
When I open xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8080/wordpress it tries to redirect to the local ip 192.168.1.xxx:8080/wordpress I feel like I'm on the right track but I'm not sure where to go from here. Thank you.
I stumbled upon the solution today after running into something similar with a site I migrated for a client today. I was sure it had to be an apache issue.
The WP installation (and others) were pointing to my private IP as I'm not using domains for any of them. This is why I kept having the site redirect.
192.168.* are private network addresses. And by definition "IP packets addressed from them cannot be transmitted through the public Internet".
You have to get yourself a public IP or use a service like https://ngrok.com/.
Alias directive itself shouldn't cause redirect. There is something else (probably some Wordpress setting or .htaccess redirect) that is causing that when the page is opened (or not found)

Home apache web server - final hurdle

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.

IP address is shown in address bar instead of domain

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

URL not redirected using Apache rewrite

I have been using apache server. I want to redirect some URL to another, eg. www.abc.com to localhost:8080/Home
I uncommented rewrite module in httpd.conf in conf folder of apache installation. Then I wrote rewrite rule like show below in httpd.conf file.
RewriteEngine On # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteRule http://www.abc.com http://localhost:8080/Home/
But nothing happened. It is simply opening abc.com as normal. There is no error message not even in log.
Can anyone suggest where the problem is?
You can only rewrite URLs that have the server as a host. Since you do not host www.abc.com, you cannot rewrite any of its URLs.
It's not the 'best' solution, but I use it at home.
Edit the 'hosts' file on your own PC to redirect. For example, mine redirects 'attic' to ip 10.0.0.5, my server in the attic. So when I type attic/myfolder, I get what I would normally get at 10.0.0.5/myfolder.
Your hosts default location can be found with a very quick google.
Not the best, as I say, but it works.
EDIT:
Okay, something.something, we'll call it xyz.com.
We need 2 things here;
a) your server must expect traffic from xyz.com
(this is just a config on the server, easy to achieve).
b) your browser must be pointed to your server when you type xyz.com.
Normally, when you type xyz.com into any browser, your PC will connect to a DNS server to find out where in the world xyz.com actually is (the DNS server returns an IP address). To inform the DNS servers that xyz.com should point to YOUR server, you need to pay to register the domain name with a registrar (unassigned domains aren't expensive). This is the best way, as every computer will now know how to get to your server by typing xyz.com. When you move your website to a hosted server, you go to your registrar's website and change the settings, saying "stop pointing to the IP of my home server and start poionting to the IP of my hosted server".
Or, if you don't want to do that, you need to tell YOUR PC to skip the DNS check, and you do that by modifying your hosts file as above. This will only work for you, but is enough for home testing purposes.
The third option is running your own DNS server, and manually telling it to override the world-wide settings for xyz.com. That way your browser would get your custom result when it checks the DNS server, and forward straight to your server. However, running your own DNS server is a complex undertaking, and is overkill for your current task.
In summary, from best option to worst:
1) Register your domain and point it home
2) Modify your hosts file to bypass DNS checking
3) Run your own DNS server, and override the settings for xyz.com
Hope I've been more clear this time :O)