Subdomains through ISPConfig for different purposes

[wustl_2008]

I have searched through the threads and found several relevant threads but have had no luck in figuring out EXACTLY what I need to do to accomplish the following.

I am trying to run Plone/Zope for a lot of my sites and I need to have the domain use Rewrite rules and ProxyPass in order to render the information from http://example.com:8800/plone_site as http://example_domain2.com I have tried a lot of things but cannot get this to work for the life of me - is there any specific way to go about doing something like this? I've tried the directives I need in the Apache directives part of the site and have gotten the rewrite rule to work but ProxyPass rules seem to simply render an error as if the page doesn't exist at all? Any ideas / help appreciated.

I'm also trying to figure out how to create a subdomain for my webmail interface. I've seen several posts about this but I can't seem to decipher how to install a package for a NEW domain - the packages seemed to be installed for a global setting and show up inside the tools link (I'm using roundcube for my webmail). Is there specific process to go through in order to get https://webmail.example.com to display https://myserver.com:81/roundcubewebmail

As I'm sure you noticed both of these problems go hand-in-hand with very similar goals. If I can solve one I'm sure the other will fall right in line with it.

Any advice appreciated as I'm new to ISPConfig (but a long-time apache veteran). I've tried creating my own servername rules in an extra include for apache2.conf with no luck as well.

wustl_2008

[till]

Originally Posted by wustl_2008

I've tried creating my own servername rules in an extra include for apache2.conf with no luck as well.

In ISPConfig you can put your directives and custom rewrite rules in the apache directives window of the website, you dont have to use additional apache includes.

[wustl_2008]

Till,

I tried that before too and didn't have any luck with that but I'll see what happens when I try again Thanks for the tip though.

wustl_2008

[till]

Originally Posted by wustl_2008

Till,

I tried that before too and didn't have any luck with that but I'll see what happens when I try again Thanks for the tip though.

If your config gets commented out by ISPConfig, you can try the following procedure to debug the problem.

1) Make a backup of the file Vhost_ispconfig.conf

2) Open Vhost_ispconfig.conf in an editor, search for the vhost of your website and remoce the comments in front of the directives.

3) run "httpd -t" to get the error message from apache.

4) Either fix the error or restore your backup of Vhost_ispconfig.conf.

This procedure does not affect your running webserver as long as you dont restart it during the test.

[wustl_2008]

Thanks Till. That is a great idea. I finally got all my subdomains setup and have got webmail, phpmyadmin, and my Zope/Plone applications loading through them SOMETIMES. I can't figure out why half the time they load but the other half they don't? The only thing I can think of is if something in my DNS records is possibly wrong perhaps the queries are not getting to where they should be?

I've noticed that my nameserver records are setup by my two IPs I put in, so instead of NS ns1.mydomain.com I'm getting NS1 [IP address]. Is this a common problem in ISPConfig or did I probably set something up wrong or does it really matter?

Any other ideas as to why my subdomains only work part of the time is also greatly appreciated. ISPConfig seems like a great interface and I'd love to figure these minor bugs out so I can avoid having to do all these records by hand again

Thanks,

wustl_2008

[till]

Originally Posted by wustl_2008

The only thing I can think of is if something in my DNS records is possibly wrong perhaps the queries are not getting to where they should be?

This sounds like a problem I had some time ago, my primary and secondary nameservers where not in sync, one server provided the right IP, the other provided an old IP address. Try to query both nameservers with dig if they return the correct IP address.

The syntax is:

dig @ns1.yournameserver.com www.yourdomian.com
dig @ns2.yournameserver.com www.yourdomian.com

I've noticed that my nameserver records are setup by my two IPs I put in, so instead of NS ns1.mydomain.com I'm getting NS1 [IP address]. Is this a common problem in ISPConfig or did I probably set something up wrong or does it really matter?

You must set the nameservers under management > server > settings on the DNS tab.

[wustl_2008]

Till,

Thanks for the great ideas. I've noticed that my DNS records are not updating when I make changes within ISPConfig. I finally (after hours of playing around and debugging) realized that a day or so ago I changed the DNS user & group names under Managment -> Server -> Settings -> DNS. I changed these to the 'bind' user as some of the other files and they seem to be getting updated now. I'll post again when I find out if this solved the problem or not (probably 24 - 48 hours to let the changes take effect). If anyone knows how to speed up the DNS cache flushing / spreading process or whatever I'm obviously a pretty pathetic newb in the DNS realm (so many years doing web development & server admin and I've managed to dodge this hectic stuff, now I know why!)

Thanks,

wustl_2008

[nenad]

Hi, did you try to change "DNSManager" ---> Options: Refresh, Expire, TimeToLive, Retry ? Try within ISPConfig, or at your DNSservice provider if you are using External DNS.

BTW Which Ditro are you using? Which Zope and Plone are you using? I need some help for seting up exactly what you did (subdomains for Zope/Plone)

[wustl_2008]

Originally Posted by nenad

Hi, did you try to change "DNSManager" ---> Options: Refresh, Expire, TimeToLive, Retry ? Try within ISPConfig, or at your DNSservice provider if you are using External DNS.

I didn't try the DNSManager -> Options: Refresh, Expire, TimeToLive, Retry. I got so frustrated with ISPConfig not working with my DNS settings (I had to uninstall and reinstall ISPConfig a few times so I'm guessing I screwed up somewhere - but I have too much data to just try and do a clean install again or I would). Anyway, I went to an external DNS management solution and my websites and subdomains are working perfectly by just adding my subdomains as websites. ISPConfig is an amazing tool and I'm very glad to have it to save me time on my apache config files. After changing my Nameservers to point to my external DNS management tool's NS records I had instant subdomains working perfectly all the time within a half hour

BTW Which Ditro are you using? Which Zope and Plone are you using? I need some help for seting up exactly what you did (subdomains for Zope/Plone)

I'm running ISPConfing (most recent release, 2.2.3 iirc?) on Ubuntu 6.06 with Python 2.3.5, Zope 2.8.7, Plone 2.1.3 AND with Python 2.4.3, Zope 2.9.3, Plone 2.5. I'll be posting a blog about how I accomplished this hopefully this weekend, but for now you may find this link http://www.zettai.net/Support/Howto/...ython23Install helpful to setup more than one instance of Python/Zope/Plone at once if you're interested.

To setup ISPConfig I created a NEW website for EVERY subdomain. I started by creating the main site: domain.com
Then I created new sites for each subdomain:
mail.domain.com
zope.domain.com
zdev.domain.com

For the zope domains I added the following ProxyPass rules in the "Apache Directives" box for the subdomain website:

ProxyPass / http://www.your-domain.com:8080/Virt...rtualHostRoot/
ProxyPassReverse / http://www.your-domain.com:8080/Virt...rtualHostRoot/

To get this to work in ISPConfig I had to go into the /etc/apache2/ and some subdirectory related to proxy or includes and then find a file named "proxy.conf". In this file there is a command that I think ISPConfig adds (not certain if it is ISPConfig or just that way by default) that says something like:

<Proxy *>
deny, allow
Deny all
</Proxy>

I found a tutorial on another website showing that Proxy has to be enabled for the specific IP and site you want... I don't have the link handy but if you can't find the reference for this let me know and I'll try to find the link. Essentially you're trying to allow Proxy passing for only your IP address the zope site is on..... Search on "zope proxy apache" or something like that and you may find it (it was a tutorial on zope.org if I remember right).

I'm not sure if ISPConfig adds "mod_proxy" into Apache by default. I configured my server with the "Perfect Setup Ubuntu 6.06" guide from Howto Forge. If you can't find any proxy stuff enabled (google on how to check for mod_proxy) - I think you can enable it easily by doing something like: sudo a2enmod mod_proxy and then restarting apache2.

I hope this gives you the list of bugs I ran into and potential solutions. I'll probably try to write a tutorial about this for plone.org if I get the chance (after I post my personal blog version with links so I can remember what I did). Let me know if you run into any problems and I'll do whatever I can to help! Plone/Zope run perfectly via my zope.domain.com all day now

wustl_2008

[nenad]

Thank you for your informations regarding to Zope/Plone.

As for DNS, yes, it could be quite hard to set it up via ISPConfig, especially if there is only one domain. There are suggestions that there has to be two domains, one www.techical.com (with DNS) and other website domain www.websites-domain.com , where techical.com domain is used for DNS purposes. However it is possible to set up DNS servers to work flawlessly with only one domain, but using manual non-standard (ISPConfig) setup.

Anyway, you have chosen probably the best solution: use of external DNS services.