5 Configuring Virtual Hosts

I will now configure two virtual hosts, one for www.example.com (with the document root /var/www/www.example.com/web) and one for www.example.org (with the document root /var/www/www.example.org/web).

I will add custom directives to both vhosts. For the www.example.com vhost I will enable directory listings and create an alias test which points back to the document root /var/www/www.example.com/web, and for the www.example.org vhost I will disable directory listings.

First, we create the document roots of both web sites (if they don't already exist):

mkdir -p /var/www/www.example.com/web
mkdir -p /var/www/www.example.org/web

Then we log in to MySQL...

mysql -u root -p

USE lighttpd;

... and create the vhosts as follows:

INSERT INTO domains VALUES ('www.example.com','/var/www/www.example.com/web/','dir-listing.activate = "enable"\nalias.url = ( "/test" => "/var/www/www.example.com/web" )');
INSERT INTO domains VALUES ('www.example.org','/var/www/www.example.org/web/','dir-listing.activate = "disable"');

As you can see in the first INSERT statement, if you want to use more than one custom directive, put a linebreak (\n) between the directives.

We can now leave the MySQL shell:

quit;

That's it, the vhosts are now configured. To check if our /usr/share/lighttpd/mysql_vhost.py script is working as expected, we can call it on the command line...

/usr/share/lighttpd/mysql_vhost.py lighttpd lighttpd secret

... and it should display the correct vhost configurations:

server1:~# /usr/share/lighttpd/mysql_vhost.py lighttpd lighttpd secret
$HTTP["host"] == "www.example.com" {
server.document-root = "/var/www/www.example.com/web/"
dir-listing.activate = "enable"
alias.url = ( "/test" => "/var/www/www.example.com/web" )
}
$HTTP["host"] == "www.example.org" {
server.document-root = "/var/www/www.example.org/web/"
dir-listing.activate = "disable"
}
server1:~#

Unlike the mod_mysql_vhost way, this method needs a lighttpd restart whenever the vhost configuration is changed, so let's restart lighttpd:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

6 Testing

Now let's test if our MySQL-based vhosts www.example.com and www.example.org are working as expected. I'm assuming that you have no index files in each document root.

Let's call http://www.example.com (for which we have enabled directory listings) in a browser, and you should see a directory listing:

Now let's go to http://www.example.com/test (there's no directory test in that vhost), and it should go back to the document root because we have configured that alias for the www.example.com vhost:

Now go to http://www.example.org, and you should get a 404 - Not Found error (unless there's an index file in the document root) because we've disabled directory listings for that vhost:

Now let's try http://www.example.org/test - as this directory does not exist and we haven't defined such an alias in the www.example.com vhost, we get a 404 - Not Found again:

So everything's working as expected.

7 Links

• mod_mysql_vhost: http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/wiki/Docs#Optionsformod_mysql_vhost-Mysqlvirtualhostingmodule
• Lighttpd: http://www.lighttpd.net
• Debian: http://www.debian.org