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How to setup a name based VirtualHost on linux mint 18.3

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To set up a name based VirtualHost on Linux Mint 18.3

  • Virtual hosting is a method for hosting multiple domain names on a single server. In this tutorial, the method to set up a name based Virtual host on Linux Mint 18.3 is covered.
  • The are two types of virtual hosting: “ Name-based virtual hosting” and “ IP-based virtual hosting.” With the name-based virtual hosting, you can host multiple websites on a single machine with a single IP address.
  • Here, we are going to host two websites &ndash namely www.virtualhost1.com and www.virtualhost2.com &ndash on a single IP on the Apache web server & the concept is applicable to all the Linux Distributions.

Setting Up

First, you need to update your system repository and then install Apache web server.

linuxhelp ~ # apt-get update
Hit:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease
Get:2 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease [11.5 kB]                                                
Ign:3 http://packages.linuxmint.com sylvia InRelease                                                                
Get:4 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial/partner amd64 Packages [3,128 B]
Get:5 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu xenial/partner i386 Packages [3,116 B]                                 
Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease [102 kB]                   
Get:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease [102 kB]     
.
.
t:30 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/universe amd64 Packages [7,084 B]                                                      
Get:31 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/universe i386 Packages [7,060 B]                                                       
Get:32 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security/multiverse i386 Packages [3,376 B]                                                     
Get:33 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/universe Translation-en [3,812 B]                                                      
Fetched 5,509 kB in 10s (549 kB/s)                                                                                                              
Reading package lists... Done

Let' s install apache web server now.

linuxhelp ~ # apt-get install apache2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap liblua5.1-0
Suggested packages:
  apache2-doc apache2-suexec-pristine | apache2-suexec-custom
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-utils libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap liblua5.1-0
0 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 282 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,540 kB of archives.
After this operation, 6,369 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
.
.
Enabling conf other-vhosts-access-log.
Enabling conf security.
Enabling conf serve-cgi-bin.
Enabling site 000-default.
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu9) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu21) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
Processing triggers for ufw (0.35-0ubuntu2) ...

Verify by checking the status of apache service.

linuxhelp ~ # systemctl status apache2.service 
● apache2.service - LSB: Apache2 web server
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/apache2  bad  vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
           └─apache2-systemd.conf
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2018-03-26 08:01:26 IST  59s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─31119 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─31122 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           └─31123 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Mar 26 08:01:25 linuxhelp systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Apache2 web server...
Mar 26 08:01:25 linuxhelp apache2[31097]:  * Starting Apache httpd web server apache2
Mar 26 08:01:25 linuxhelp apache2[31097]: AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server' s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.
Mar 26 08:01:26 linuxhelp apache2[31097]:  *
Mar 26 08:01:26 linuxhelp systemd[1]: Started LSB: Apache2 web server.

To verify whether the Web server is working or not, open the web browser and navigate to the URL http://your-ip-address.
apache

Create two directories for the websites www.virtualhost1.com and www.virtualhost2.com.

linuxhelp ~ # mkdir -p /var/www/html/www.virtualhost1.com
linuxhelp ~ # mkdir -p /var/www/html/www.virtualhost2.com

Now you need to create an “ index.html” file for both websites. This will be served by the Apache web server. Create an index.html file for “ www.virtualhost1.com” virtual host:

linuxhelp ~ # vim /var/www/html/www.virtualhost1.com/index.html
Add the following content:
< html> 
    < head> 
        < title> www.virtualhost1.com< /title> 
    < /head> 
    < body> 
        < h1> Welcome To www.virtualhost1.com website< /h1> 
    < /body> 
< /html> 
~

Similarly, create an index.html file for “ www.virtualhost2.com” virtual host

linuxhelp ~ # vim /var/www/html/www.virtualhost2.com/index.html
add the following lines
< html> 
    < head> 
        < title> www.virtualhost2.com< /title> 
    < /head> 
    < body> 
        < h1> Welcome To www.virtualhost2.com website< /h1> 
    < /body> 
< /html>

Save and close the file.


You must change the ownership of these two virtual directories to “ www-data,” so that Apache can read and write data.

linuxhelp ~ # chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/www.virtualhost1.com/
linuxhelp ~ # chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/www.virtualhost2.com/

Also, you need to make the Apache web root (/var/www/html) directory world readable so that everyone can read files from that directory.

linuxhelp ~ # chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/

By default, Apache comes with a default virtual host file called “ 000-default.conf.” You need to disable this virtual host file first.

linuxhelp ~ # a2dissite 000-default.conf 
Site 000-default disabled.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 reload

Now, create a virtual host file “ www.virtualhost1.com.conf” for the virtual host www.virtualhost1.com.
Add the following lines. 

linuxhelp ~ # vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.virtualhost1.com.conf
< VirtualHost *:80> 
ServerAdmin admin@virtualhost1.com
ServerName  www.virtualhost1.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/www.virtualhost1.com

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.virtualhost1.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.virtualhost1.com_access.log combined
< /VirtualHost> 
~

Similarly, create a virtual host file “ www.virtualhost2.com.conf” for the virtual host www.virtualhost2.com.

vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.virtualhost2.com.conf

< VirtualHost *:80> 
ServerAdmin admin@virtualhost2.com
ServerName  www.virtualhost2.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/www.virtualhost2.com

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.virtualhost1.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/www.virtualhost1.com_access.log combined
< /VirtualHost>

Save and close the file.


After creating the virtual host files, you need to enable a new virtual host.

linuxhelp ~ # a2ensite www.virtualhost1.com.conf
Enabling site www.virtualhost1.com.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 reload
linuxhelp ~ # a2ensite www.virtualhost2.com.conf
Enabling site www.virtualhost2.com.
To activate the new configuration, you need to run:
  service apache2 reload

Finally, restart the Apache service.

linuxhelp ~ # systemctl restart apache2.service

You need to add a host entry on each and every remote or local system to resolve the website by name. You can do this by editing the “ /etc/hosts” file.

linuxhelp ~ # vim /etc/hosts
192.168.7.234   www.virtualhost1.com
192.168.7.234   www.virtualhost2.com

Save and close the file.
Open your web browser and navigate to the URLs “ http://www.virtualhost1.com” and “ http://www.virtualhost2.com.” You should see the sample demo pages which we created earlier.
vhost_1
vhost_2
With this, the method to setup a name based Virtual host on Linux Mint 18.3 comes to an end.

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Frequently asked questions ( 5 )

Q

How to selects the proper name-based virtual host?

A

It is important to recognize that the first step in name-based virtual host resolution is an IP-based resolution. Name-based virtual host resolution only chooses the most appropriate name-based virtual host after narrowing down the candidates to the best IP-based match. Using a wildcard (*) for the IP address in all of the VirtualHost directives makes this IP-based mapping irrelevant.

When a request arrives, the server will find the best (most specific) matching argument based on the IP address and port used by the request. If there is more than one virtual host containing this best-match address and port combination, Apache will further compare the ServerName and ServerAlias directives to the server name present in the request.

If you omit the ServerName directive from any name-based virtual host, the server will default to a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) derived from the system hostname. This implicitly set server name can lead to counter-intuitive virtual host matching and is discouraged.

Q

Why the need to restart the apache service when I made the changes in server configuration?

A

The service should be restart when after making changes in the server configuration. then the only server can consider the configuration changes.

Q

What is system requirement for make name-based virtual hosting?

A

The requirement for making "name-based" virtual host on the system is given below,
1. A server running CentOS v. 7 with Apache installed
2. A desktop machine running Linux
3. A static IP address.

Q

How to make an entry on "/etc/hosts" file for name-based virtual hosting?

A

For making an entry into the "/etc/hosts", follow steps as below,
1. open a "/etc/hosts" file -> "vim /etc/hosts" (or) "nano /etc/hosts"
2. Add the line into the file as follow -> "0.0.0.0 www.example.com" (or) "0.0.0.0 www.test.com"

Q

How to create the name-based virtual host configuration on Linux?

A

For creating the name-based virtual host configuration on Linux, use the syntax as given below,
"
ServerName www.domain.tld
ServerPath /domain
DocumentRoot /web/domain
"

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