I have Linux RedHat 6.2 running on a box on my LAN.

I have installed Apache 1.3.20.

(I am concerned with getting this working on my LAN only right now)

I can hit my server through localhost. The IP for my server is 192.168.1.3


I have added a virtual host to my httpd.conf file, the host I want to add is called www.orbitalsoftware.ca and I also edited my /etc/hosts file as such: 192.168.1.3 www.orbitalsoftware.ca

The problem is that when I type the URL into the browser I go straight to the Default Apache Web Server Page that you get if your installation was successful. Ideally the server should see that URL "www.orbitalsoftware.ca" and direct the request to the path I put in the DocumentRoot directive in the Virtual Host Definition.



<VirtualHost 192.168.1.3>
ServerName www.orbitalsoftware.ca
ServerAlias orbitalsoftware.ca *.orbitalsoftware.ca
DocumentRoot /home/httpd/orbital
ServerAdmin hostmaster@orbitalsoftware.ca
</VirtualHost>



Now I would like to give you one more piece of information that may or may not be useful in helping me isolate what is happening.

When I view my httpd.conf for the 'Main Server Configuration' I have listed as DocumentRoot "/home/httpd/html"
That directory contains an index.html file that states the Apache Install was successful.

I decided to change that index.htm so that it only rendered a few words (because of another problem entirely - IE had garbled characters - yet to solve that one) and I went back to the browser and called up the URL to localhost. Much to my amazement I did not get my recently edited index.htm file instead I received the same "Apache Install Successful..." page.

I find this bizarre because the default page for the server is not /home/httpd/html/ as listed in the conf file.

I will be eagerly awaiting help on this one.

Thank-you in advance

Neil Jubinville

At the risk of stating the obvious did you remember to restart Apache after making the change?

cheers

Jamie...

Yes, everytime I have made changes to the httpd.conf file I have restarted apache. (Stop then start)

Do I have to set an alias somewhere?

I also found out that Apache does something interesting:



In my hosts file .....


127.0.0.1 Fed007
192.168.1.3 www.orbitalsoftware.ca
192.168.1.3 www.softwarejedi.com



If I enter "www.orbital...." into my browser I will get into the specified vhost directory. Which is /home/httpd/orbital

I also get to the same place if I enter 192.168.1.3 ???

If I enter "www.softwarejedi.com" I get the default documentroot which is /home/httpd/html

For some reason Apache is reading is the host info but only for the "www.orbitalsoftware.ca" and defaulting the other.

Thanks

I have identified now that every virtual host is is going to the
/home/httpd/orbital

This has been confirmed by my URL entries in the browser

Does this have anything to do with my hosts file?

I have isolated the problem,

For some reason there were conf files in two directories

/etc/httpd/conf/

and

/usr/local/apache/conf/

It seems as though Apache knows that both locations can exist because during my testing I realized that Apache loaded the
/usr/.... then the /etc/....

at any rate I removed the etc/conf files and everything works as I would expect.

NOW I SETUP THE DNS!!!

This is fun - I will have to get back to some real work soon.

Greetings Friend:

I am having the same problem and was wondering if you had to manually enter the hosts names in yout /etc/hosts file?

Yes if you don't have a dns server to check the ip number against, especially during testing before the true dns is setup.

In the file /etc/nsswitch.conf, there is a line
hosts: files dns

This says go to /etc/hosts before looking for a dns server.