Very primary questions?

Steven Champeon schampeo at hesketh.com
Fri Sep 10 16:14:38 UTC 1999


On Fri, 10 Sep 1999 rpgista at my-deja.com wrote:
> 1)I have the www.vipline.com domain.

No, you have the vipline.com domain. 'www' is a hostname.

> My company is now developing a web business site and I have to offer our
> clients some sort of http://clientname.vipline.com domain

No, you have to offer your clients hostnames in the vipline.com domain, and
then provide them with virtual Web hosting support for those hostnames.

> (nowadays, I can only get my clients a www.vipline.com/clientname URL...)

Consider the Apache documentation, particularly WRT 'VirtualHost'. Start here:

 http://www.apache.org/docs/vhosts/index.html

> I guess that's not done through DNS.

You guess that what's not done through DNS? Setting up Virtual hosting on
an Apache server? No, that's not done through DNS. It's done via the Apache
configuration files. But if you're trying to setup a Virtual host on Apache,
say, for:

 dumb-example.vipline.com

You will need to setup Apache to handle HTTP requests for that address:

srm.conf:
# replace 123.123.123.123 with the right IP address
NameVirtualHost 123.123.123.123
<VirtualHost 123.123.123.123>
ServerName www.vipline.com
DocumentRoot /where/your/web/docs/live
# other local directives go here
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 123.123.123.123>
ServerName dumb-example.vipline.com
DocumentRoot /where/your/clients/web/docs/live
# other local directives go here
</VirtualHost>

You will need to create a CNAME record for 'dumb-example' in the vipline.com
zone file, say, like this:

 dumb-example	IN CNAME	www.vipline.com.

and restart/reload your nameserver /before/ restarting Apache. Bear in mind
that this will not work for older browsers, as it relies on the server being
passed the Host: header in HTTP requests. (Older, in this context, means
"older than Netscape Navigator 1.1"). If you need to support older browsers,
you'll need individual IP addresses assigned to each virtual host, which is
beyond the scope of my reply :)

> Is that a server feature?

Is what a server feature? Aliases for hostnames? Yes, that's a pretty basic
feature of DNS. ;) Virtual Host configurations under Apache? Yes, that's a
pretty basic server feature as well, or has been since 1994 or so.

> I use the Apache server under Linux, but I couldn't find something to help
> me doing such thing using it.

Did you look at the documentation for Apache or BIND at all? 

> 2)Subscribing to a local magazine, I have received a reply message
> posted to the newreader at vipline.com address - but such thing DOES NOT
> exist! It has, though, successfully come to my marcio at vipline.com
> address. I tried sending this newreader at vipline.com a message, but I
> got a DNS error - i.e. it doesn't really exists...

You may have catchall aliasing for the domain (where rather than bouncing
all misaddressed mail goes to a single person). Oh, and the 'DNS Error' 
you got wasn't related to DNS, I'd say it was related to your mail config.

It really does help to distinguish between DNS, mail, and the Web. I find
many problems curiously resolve themselves when they are stated in terms
appropriate to the problem domain.

Cheers,
Steve




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