This is not my topic!

[gordonb3]

@anyone reading this

I resent what is being done here. Below you will find the moderator entry and my original - correct - answer to a question placed here in the `Networking and security forum`. As I'm totally fed up with people that stagger in faulty answers wanting to own this forum, with this split out topic as a result, this will be the last time I'll share my knowledge with anyone but myself and those that either pay me or ask really really nicely.

If you like to call this your victory then please be my guest. I've been a Gentoo user since 2005 and a linux user far longer, at which time most of you self-declared experts were likely still wearing diapers.That is as far as your gloating may go. I'll continue using Gentoo and contribute to it. Just not here, not to you, because you already know everything and you obviously can't appreciate other people's insights.

One final thought for you: if your solution is the only one that works, why isn't it part of the ebuild?

Enjoy the rest of your life,
Gordon


[Moderator note: this post, and the first seven responses, were originally in How am I supposed to be able to use vhosts?. They were not sufficiently on-topic for the original poster's problem, and have been split out. The first response, and only the first response, in that thread was already present when the split occurred. -Hu]

Yeah... that's a tricky one

Apache goes down the alphanumerical order of the vhost config files and will use the first config that matches the request. I'm somewhat puzzled how you managed to make that select the wrong vhost though as the default site is defined in a file named 00_default_vhost.conf.

The default installation also includes something annoying, being that the Listen directive is part of the default vhost definition. So if you disable the default vhost, then you must specify the Listen directive somewhere else, but you may not specify the same (or overlapping) Listen directive twice within your configuration.

[Hu]

[gordonb3]

[Hu]

I am confused. First you said it goes down the list, which would put 00 after 10, meaning that the first hit is in the lexicographically last file. Now you say the default must be first in alphanumeric order, which would require it to be in 00 - and that is what actually happens. The first hit is from the lexicographically first file. So we now agree that it is in lexicographic order. So what exactly did you try that did not work?

[gordonb3]

No, I didn't.

[gordonb3]

Even if you're not serving multiple sites you should still want to have a default "catch all" vhost next to your intended site. It really does save you a lot of trouble with script-kiddies if you only give them the "It Works!" page. And no cgi-bin, because those f*ers love that.

It really isn't that difficult once you get the mechanism of it. It's a chain, much like iptables. On the first match it jumps out to execute what is defined: ACCEPT, REJECT, DROP, serve pages from this vhost (the first three are of course iptables). So if you have a 05-site5 and a 01-site1 that both match the request from the browser you will be seeing the 05-site5 pages. It's not an election. It doesn't go on searching after finding 01-site1 to somehow figure that 05-site5 is a better match. The only confusing element in this is that apache performs the matching in reverse order from loading the rules.

[szatox]

[gordonb3]

[szatox]

Now that this off-topic part is split from the original, we can continue without polluting the original thread.

gordonb3, how comes you find a "default" vhost a security measure for protecting your main website?
Let me point out that you _want_ your wwbsite to be easily found on the internet. You want* other websites to link to yours.
As a result, it's much easier to find your server by it's primary hostname (the one you actually use) than by its IP.

[John R. Graham]