I need feedback on the following...

I develop several web sites and my clients typically use my hosting service. Before I move new clients to my machines, I like to test everything, but with the default Colbalt Raq4 configurations, you cannot view virtual sites until DNS is set up.

To check virtual sites before DNS is completed, I made a symbolic link from my personal site to the web diretory of the virtual site, e.g.
so that say a site at
/home/sites/www.domain.com/web
is linked to my account
/home/sites/myaccount/web/domain

I think changes the access.conf to allow follow symlinks for myaccount only.

This is great because know I can offer site previews for clients by directing them to http://www.mydomain.com/yoursite/
And when the site is ready, I just update the DNS and Nameserver info.....


The question is about security?
Does this pose any additional security links by opening up
symlinks?

Thanks....

Personally I editted the httpd.conf and putted an extra line to the domain of the company.

The line is:

AliasMatch ^/domain/([^/]+)(/(.*))? /home/sites/$1/web/$3

If your clients type now: http://www.host.com/domain/www.testen.com/

They will see a preview of the domain called http://www.testen.com that is on your server.

Does anyone have any other solution to this prob ... I dont feel like editing httpd.conf file everytime i host a domain ...

With this solution I don't think you have to edit the httpd.conf file each time just once.

huck, with Cobalt, you can actually view virtual sites before the domain is alive.

Create the virtual site and then access it as follows:

If the site has its own IP:
http://IPNUMBER:81/.cobalt/siteManage/www.newvirtualsite.com/index.html

If the site doesn't have its own IP:
http://yourserver.com:81/.cobalt/siteManage/www.newvirtualsite.com/index.html

oh oh! the post above is actually to access the Site Management screen while the domain is not yet alive and not the web site itself . sorry I got confused a little bit.

Originally posted by thebigH
Does anyone have any other solution to this prob ... I don't feel like editing httpd.conf file everytime i host a domain ...

You only need to edit the httpd.conf 1 time.

StarHost ...

Can you tell me how to use mod_alias or mod_rewrite for redirecting subdomain.domain.com to domain.com/subdomain ?

Not Yet.

I'm also trying to do this, but untill now I didn't manage to get it working. Maybey there are some rewrite freaks who could give me some help/tips writing it.

I got it to work for some reason it wont' startup when you do an httpd restart so I rebooted the server and it work great after that. You have to use www.yourdomain.com/domain/www.thierdomain.com

Originally posted by Starhost
Personally I editted the httpd.conf and putted an extra line to the domain of the company.

The line is:

AliasMatch ^/domain/([^/]+)(/(.*))? /home/sites/$1/web/$3

If your clients type now: http://www.host.com/domain/www.testen.com/

They will see a preview of the domain called http://www.testen.com that is on your server.

That work on a 4r as well?

It should work, though I'm not sure.

Originally posted by Starhost
Personally I editted the httpd.conf and putted an extra line to the domain of the company.

The line is:

AliasMatch ^/domain/([^/]+)(/(.*))? /home/sites/$1/web/$3

If your clients type now: http://www.host.com/domain/www.testen.com/

They will see a preview of the domain called http://www.testen.com that is on your server.

Where, exactly, does that line go? I have been looking for a solution to this for a couple of days, and would like to make sure that I understand so that I do not screw it up.

Also, would this allow FTP access by using www.host.com/domain/www.testen.com/ as the host?

Alias line would go inside the VIRT HOST that you want to allow this to work for. Maybe main domain of the server, etc.

FTP in using either any IP address on the server, or any domain/subdomain currently working on the server.

Thanks, but does this mean that I would have to edit the httpd.conf file every time I add a domain to the server? I was hoping that there was a solution that I could apply one time and that it would be effective server wide.

i do something much simpler.

i just set up a subdomain of customer.mydomain.com for web development previews. once the customer.com domain name has switched over to me i just go into the server site settings for customer.mydomain.com and change the the host name, domain name, and alias to reflect the customer.com domain name.

the only short coming that i have found is that there are problems with MS FrontPage publishing to subdomains. i haven't figured a way arround this yet.

huck, with Cobalt, you can actually view virtual sites before the domain is alive.

Create the virtual site and then access it as follows:

If the site doesn't have its own IP:
http://yourserver.com:81/.cobalt/si....com/index.html

i am trying to give a customer access to thier siteadmin before the domain name transfers. i tried the above without any luck. what should i plug into the "si....com"?

http://IP:81/.cobalt/siteManage/www.domain.com

Replace IP and www.domain.com as necessary.

Gary

Gary, i tried a few of my sites with the URL formula you gave. none of them work. i get page can't be found errors.

Oooops...my apologies. I missed an "s". Try this:

https://IP:81/.cobalt/siteManage/www.domain.com

Replace IP and www.domain.com as necessary.

Just checked it, and it works. I think I should call it a day now. :-)

Gary

When you do this on a raq4 you come up with the domain www.yourdomain/siteadmin and not the actual site

Richard

Yep...I was responding to Nettastic's request o be able to access the siteadmin prior to the domain resolving.

In the case of the initial post...to preview the content...that was already answered up above. Aliasing a virtual folder that picks up the specific folder. We use something like:

http://topIP/newsite/www.domain.com

with the relevant httpd.conf entries in place.

Regards

Gary

I set up my new site www.bestsite.com.

Then I simply edit the hosts file on the box I am accessing it with.
(c:\windows\hosts - it starts out as hosts.sam and I copy it over to hosts)(c:\winnt\system32\etc\drivers\hosts)

ADD A LINE

192.168.1.251 www.bestsite.com

Frontpage is happy to access it then.

However, if viewing is needed from afar then edit of httpd.conf is required.

:D

Originally posted by Marty
Thanks, but does this mean that I would have to edit the httpd.conf file every time I add a domain to the server? I was hoping that there was a solution that I could apply one time and that it would be effective server wide.

In theory, this should be a one time modification that should then work for any site on the server. In theory. I was never sure this was tested on a RaQ4, as well as 3. I've found some rewrite conditions that the 4's didn't seem to like, and I never could figure out a working example (not of this, of another redirect thingy...)

I set it up on my RaQ4i and it works fine. I have not added a domain since setting it up so I don't know if it will stay then.

As a demonstation:

http://rehoboth.2hostdns.com/domain/www.ak0.net
http://rehoboth.2hostdns.com/domain/www.2hostdns.com
http://rehoboth.2hostdns.com/domain/www.zionpbc.org

Note: All of these are sharing the same ip.

Enjoy!!

And you threw it in the main site's VIRT HOST correct? I always mean to add this and test it but somehow between thinking about it and actually doing it, something gets lost, heh. Also need to get a decent form mail script on the server, I keep forgetting where I put the modified one, heh.

Originally posted by Chicken
And you threw it in the main site's VIRT HOST correct?

Yep, that is exactly where I put it. I then just did a restart on httpd, and it all worked great.

The simplest way i find is that go to your local Computer ( your desktop) and change its DNS settings and give the DNS setting here as the primary and secondry settings of your RAQ. ...and presto you r done ....

for eg the primary DNS of my RAQ is 192.168.0.1
and secondry is 192.168.0.2


Now If i'm running Win200 then i simply go to MY NETWORK> PROPERTIES > and TCP/IP and here i simply change the primary and Sec DNS and assign it as 192.168.0.1
and 192.168.0.2 ...and then its simple ..I can simply type www.mydomain.com and my site is up and running :)

Hope it helps and this is the easiest i found to do so

Originally posted by Donovan
Can you tell me how to use mod_alias or mod_rewrite for redirecting subdomain.domain.com to domain.com/subdomain ?

I've been doing that with mod_rewrite in a .htaccess file... I wouldnt know how to do it with httpd.conf file or whatever, but this is what I use in my .htaccess file:


RewriteEngine on

rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.domain.com$
rewritecond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subdirectory/
RewriteRule (.*) /subdirectory/$1


-Jeremy

Originally posted by inquisitive
The simplest way i find is that go to your local Computer ( your desktop) and change its DNS settings and give the DNS setting here as the primary and secondry settings of your RAQ. ...and presto you r done ....

for eg the primary DNS of my RAQ is 192.168.0.1
and secondry is 192.168.0.2


Now If i'm running Win200 then i simply go to MY NETWORK> PROPERTIES > and TCP/IP and here i simply change the primary and Sec DNS and assign it as 192.168.0.1
and 192.168.0.2 ...and then its simple ..I can simply type www.mydomain.com and my site is up and running :)

Hope it helps and this is the easiest i found to do so

Yea, that is easy for me, but I seem to be the webhost for the technically challenged. I do have some clients that are exceptions, but most are not. It is easier to give the a url than to have them monkeying around with the network settings of their pc.

well different strokes for different folks ...;)

Finally got around to adding it, works great, thankx (late) for the post. Surely easier than explaining anything that my clients have to change on their computer. I don't think you've experienced the sheer lack of basic computer skills I have, heh. The real estate agents I deal with want realtor.com type sites, yet barely know how to use their AOL email. I offered to do a site 'for a friend' as a favor for $300. He tried to talk me DOWN to $250! Ugggggh, I hate these people. This is perfect.

I'd just like to thank StarHost for posting that original answer. Very useful indeed!

Just joined here, been snooping for a few days, and it's very useful.

Hope I can be some use to others in the future too!

:)