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.
Related
I have already installed an Apache HTTP server in my RedHat system, now I need to install a Bitnami application package which contains another Apache. So I am wondering how to make them not disturbing each other?
I guess I need to configure different ports for the two HTTP server. But what if one has 8080 and another has 9090, will we visit http://[ServerName]:8080/something.html and http://[ServerName]:9090/something.html? I think this way is quite inconvenient. Am I wrong or any better idea?
My advice would be to do something like this.
Have one Apache instance listen in port 80 and the other one in port 8080 for example. The Apache instance that listens in port 80 can act as a proxy to the other Apache (port 8080) using the ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse directives.
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy.html
You would need to define prefixes or virtual hosts and inside them add ProxyPass directives.
I don't know to what kind of user those applications are targeted to but the usual end-user is not used to enter ports when browsing the web.
If you like to use the ports, go for it, but I would recommend using Name-based Virtual Host
so you could use different domains or subdomains to each application.
In addition to the example provided by the docs (in where they just point to different folders) in this digitalocean page they document how to make redirects to different urls.
I completely agree with EndermanAPM that usual end-user is not used to enter ports when browsing the web. Therefore, I would only allow port 80 to be accessed by the end-users.
Additional to the current solutions I see another one:
avoid messing up the settings of the Apache servers in order to not end-up with some malfunctions of your websites
leave the Apache servers listen on their designated ports (8080 respectively 9090)
install a dedicated proxy in front of the Apache servers. The proxy would listen on port 80 and would define redirect rules that would parse the request and would redirect it to the proper Apache server. (see the attached picture)
I recommend you HA Proxy. It is a very fast and reliable http and tcp proxy. I've been using it in production for years, in front of application servers, web servers and even database servers. Once you get used with its syntax, it is pretty easy to use.
I am aware that introducing a new component into the equation might add another source of potential issues. But I think that the architecture is cleaner. Besides, the two Apache servers will not be disturbing each other as you requested. You can shut down any one of the two and the other one would properly work further.
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
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.
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
What should do to setup a sub-domain for the users when they sign-up into my site.
What are the infrastructure required? I am using Linux servers.
You can either use a specific DNS (CNAME or A/AAAA) entry for each known subdomain, or a wild-card DNS entry that'll accept *.example.com:
$ORIGIN example.com
foo IN A 12.34.6.78
bar IN A 12.34.6.78
or
$ORIGIN example.com
* IN A 12.34.6.78
The advantage of this latter is that no changes are required to either DNS or Apache configuration once the service is running. The disadvantage is that all such wildcard lookups must (by definition) end up returning the same IP address.
The Apache configuration will depend on your requirements, both for end-user control and security. Note that if the users have permission to run CGI scripts on the server then additional setup will be needed to ensure that that's done securely.
Depending on whether content is static or dynamic this will also affect your configuration:
Use mod_vhost_alias to map individual virtual hosts into their individual directories on the server.
If you really want, create a separate <VirtualHost> section for each known site, but then you'll have to restart Apache each time a new user signs up
Use a single <VirtualHost> and then look at the hostname part of the requested URL (from the $SERVER_NAME environment variable) in the scripts that render the output to figure out which user's content to display.
You can make a CNAME entry/ A Record in your DNS settings, for each subdomain
A CNAME record is a record in your
Domain Management Settings that allows
you to control a subdomain of your
domain.
To automate it along with registration, you can write a script which is executed for each user, when s/he registers.
You can refer to this link, as well, for a step-by-step process for Apache:
How to setup subdomains in apache
(since you mentioned Linux, I assume it must be APache. Please mention if it is otherwise)
Alternate Solution
You can also refer to the wildcard solution, given by Alnitak, in the same thread. I find his is an easier way. :)
infrastructure includes access the the dns server to add a wildcard entry, and rewrite rules in Apache.
Try these answers:
How to let PHP to create subdomain automatically for each user?
How to make subdomain user accounts in a webapp
or this link:
http://jam.jrox.com/docs/index.php?article=76
If your using Linux server's I'm assuming your using Apache as your webserver.
You'll have to setup proper DNS routing for the sub domain as well as a virtual host.
Virtual Hosts are fairly easy to setup but I'm not sure how easy it is to do them on the fly progmatically.
Most of the time it's as easy as editing your apache config file and adding the following:
Port 80
ServerName www.mydomain.com
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /www/user-bob
ServerName bob.mydomain.com
...
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /www/user-sally
ServerName sally.mydomain.com
...
</VirtualHost>
The VirtualHost Documention will probably of some use to you.
Apache allows you to specify any number of 'sites' based on subdomains on a single server. Creating a new 'site definition' file with the appropriate subdomain information in it, along with proper DNS wildcards, will do what you want.
In other words, the process is like this:
Setup wildcards so that *.mysite.com directs to the proper server.
When a new user signs up, create the proper Apache site definition file - you'll probably have a base template that you put the right subdomain information into and save.
Make Apache re-read its configuration.
Profit.
IMPORTANT This is based on a Debian-style Apache configuration, where the config files are included in a directory, and the main configuration reads all the config files in that directory. This will simplify things a great deal, because adding/removing subdomains will mean adding/removing files, rather than editing a single file, and so the process will be much easier to automate.