Re: automatic Virtual Host

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:54:09 +0200, Florent
<superfc@superfc.dyndns.org> wrote:

>So, I would like to have an apache configuration, wich looks like :
>DocumentRoot: /home/<domain>/<sub-domain>

maybe you can get some ideas from the mass vhost part in the
documentation, can be found here or on million other places:
http://www.ipv6.berkom.de/manual/vhosts/mass.html

BUT this does not exactly offer what you want. You want your users to
create a directory that will be served as a subdomain, right?

This implies that not only apache conf has to change but also some
changes to your nameserver have to be done. You won´t get a simple
dynamic solution for that, but it is not very complicating to write
some script, that does exactly what you want.

A common pitfall with directory-based vhosts and one of the really
stupid siteeffects in Apache is the fact, that a missing directory for
a vhost will lead to Apache NOT starting for all other hosts next time
you restart it. Maybe there is some option to change this, but I did
not found anything. Try it yourself. make a vhost and delete / rename
the relating directory. You get it?

Regarding your wanted configuration this means that if a user can
write, that means also delete/rename, a directory for a vhost, every
user on that machine will be able to DOS your whole Apache Service
just by deleting it´s directory. Lots of work after next
apacherestart.

So only root or at least some kind of maintainance-user should have
write permissions to that important vhost-related directory, NOT your
webhosting users.

The best thing for your problem will be writing some kind of simple
admin-script that will write a new line to your zone-files, create a
dir, change / create vhost for that dir, reload apache. Then write a
web-frontend to that script and go to sourceforge and publish it to
get some other people take a look at it to make sure, there are not
too many bugs.

You could also look for existing hosting automation solutions on
sourceforge or freshmeat.




Have a nice thread,
Peter