[Gloucs] apache virtual hosts

[Guy Edwards]

On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 18:30, Richard Mellersh wrote:
[snip]
> 2. My skin is getting very wrinkly.

At Glug meets just introduce yourself as a gnarly unix programmer and
mutter something about your days working on the mainframe. People will
be impressed and not question it. :-)
[snip]

ok, now Richard, skip down this email to the bit on this email that says
"VVVVVVVVV down here Richard VVVVVVVVV" and ignore the rest for now.

> Down below to save words I'll put a string of ??????????? where your words are 
> Martian to me OK?

ok, see I was assuming you were a sys admin type person at a small
business which is where I went a bit over the top.

> > Note: you still need to modify the DNS with this so that peoples
> > machines actually know that 
> ??????????????fredbloggs.myserversomewhere.co.uk?????????????
the example dns name was an example of where
myserversomewhere.co.uk was your web servers name with a dns name for it
registered and fredbloggs was a friend of yours, so you'd setup a dns
name fredbloggs.myserversomewhere.co.uk to point to your IP address, the
web server would then redirect all requests for
fredbloggs.myserversomewhere.co.uk to a folder on the normal server,
which is what I was describing.

> > translates to a certain IP, otherwise they won't be able to find you.
> ??? what about if I just GIVE 195.112.17.79 to my friends ???

yep, then your friends machines will go to your sever fine via an Ip
address but (someone shout if I get this all wrong) you wont be able to
do any of the redirection by dns name (the computers name) tricks as
your clients are accessing the server by just its IP address. But hey,
if that's what you need to work with thats fine.

[snip]
> > [...]
> > NameVirtualHost your.ip.address.here
> ??? do you mean 195.112.17.79 ???

yes

> >  Servername myserversomewhere.co.uk
> ????? now you got me where does this come from ?????

If you had a DNS name registered to point to your Ip address you'd stick
it in there instead of "myserversomewhere.co.uk" which hopefully doesn't
actually exist.

VVVVVVVVVVVV Down here Richard VVVVVVVVVVV

> > Although it's safer to do the following:
> > 	Options SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
> ????????????????????????????????? HUH ???????????????????????

ok, some people, like lets say certain students for instance (yep I know
you're on this list), will do absolutely anything to try and show how
knowledgeable they are by trying to break your server. You'll probably
know if it happens to you as you'll get a phone call from one of your
friends saying "hey someones defaced your site" and they'll be a message
left on your site by someone with seemingly appallingly bad spelling.
Just ignore that technical information I gave you for now, but one day
you might need it for helping tighten things up.

> > and then of course just make a link in the normal way
> > mymachine:/var/www/friends# ln -s /home/bob/www bobsdir
> ???????????????????? "Normal"? HUH ???????????????????????

erm, ok. Think of a shortcut on MS windows. It's kind of the same
(roughly) as a symlink under Linux. You can have a relative link like
this, where ln is the command we're using to make a link: 

$> ln -s ../mydirectory link
which will mean the file "link" will actually be a shortcut to a folder
called "mydirectory" one directory beneath where you are now. Think of
the command "cd .." in MS dos or in Linux, that's what ../ is referring
to.

or an absolute path like this
$> ln -s /home/mydirectory/target  link
Which will mean the file "link" will be a shortcut to a folder at 
"/home/mydirectory/target". I can move the file "link" wherever I like
and it will still point to the same place.

At this point you could find it really useful to find a budding Linux
tech/enthusiast and offer them beer/cash etc and get a bit of tuition
which will help no end. I can't do it but there should be a few people
on the list willing.

> Thanks for you patience Guy.
Nay problem.

> PS How do you get you e-mails to have the same words at the bottom each time?

You're using kmail by the looks of it, so using this link here:
http://kmail.kde.org/manual/faq.html#id2794270
It says:
"6.29 How do I automatically insert a text footer within my mails?
The text footer is called a signature file. Select Settings->Configure
KMail... Look in the Identity tab for the Specify signature below field.
Select the radio button and type your signature below."

Guy