Apache Multiple Sub Domains With One IP Address

Question

This has probably been asked but I can't find a straight answer, or the ones I found don't work.

I have one domain mydomain.com, resolving to an IP; let's call it 8.8.8.8. The DNS settings also point two subdomains to that IP address with an A record. These are dev.mydomain.com and staging.mydomain.com. Both have an A-record pointing to 8.8.8.8.

On the server (8.8.8.8) I have two virtual hosts files. These are as follows:

staging.mydomain.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName  staging.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/staging/
</VirtualHost>

And...

dev.mydomain.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName  dev.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/dev/
</VirtualHost>

The problem is:

Regardless of whether I visit http://staging.mydomain.com or http://dev.mydomain.com, I always land on staging.mydomain.com (Apache serves these files).

I have restarted Apache and even the server. If I change the order of the .conf files so that dev is first, I always see that. Any suggestions would be so appreciated. Thanks!

---

update

I find myself back at this problem again! If you know that your syntax is correct, you might have a bad symlink. Delete it and recreate again, restarting apache in-between. I just did this and it solved hours of head-scratching. On CentOS you can check your available vhosts with httpd -S

update 2

I've also found this issue to exist when the apache log files for the virtual host don't exist, or aren't writable.

Solution

Sounds like you need to add NameVirtualHost directive to your configuration.

NameVirtualHost         *:80

Under some circumstances Apache may not be able to handle *:80 VirtualHosts correctly. In those cases you should map VirtualHosts directly on specific IPs.

NameVirtualHost         8.8.8.8:80

<VirtualHost 8.8.8.8:80>
    ServerName  staging.mydomain.com
    ServerAlias stage.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/staging/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 8.8.8.8:80>
    ServerName  dev.mydomain.com
    ServerAlias development.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/dev/
</VirtualHost>

You can also run apachectl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS to see how Apache parses the VirtualHost configuration.

Update: As mentioned in the comments, usually you can just use NameVirtualHost *:80. So most of the time you can configure the virtual hosts as follows.

NameVirtualHost         *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName  staging.mydomain.com
    ServerAlias stage.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/staging/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName  dev.mydomain.com
    ServerAlias development.mydomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mydomain.com/dev/
</VirtualHost>

Comments

[Sumurai8]

I have voted to re-open this question, because both the question and the answer are helpful. Besides this, questions about Apache are not off-topic on StackOverflow, and ServerFault is only for professional setups.

[Jongosi]

Thx Ketola. At the end of my httpd.conf file, I have the following (where the vhosts are included) NameVirtualHost *:80 [[new line]] Include /etc/httpd/sites-enabled/

[Ketola]

That should work then. Apache can be a bit picky with *:80 at times, so you might want to try 8.8.8.8:80 instead to see if it works better. Also run apachectl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS to see how Apache parses your configuration files. Updated the answer to reflect these as well.

[Jongosi]

Thanks Ketola, tried that in both .conf files and the httpd.conf file but no cigar, although the order changes! The apachectl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS is very useful and shows that Apache is defining the dev server as the default and loading it first.

[Ketola]

Very strange. The only other cause I can think of is a typo somewhere, but that's quite unlikely. Do you have a proxy or anything else in between that could mess up the Host: header in the request? The next step would be to set LogLevel debug in Apache, and/or do telnet localhost 80 on the server and request for the document directly.

[Jongosi]

Thx anyway Ketola. Going to look at the domain DNS settings again.

[Ketola]

Thank you for accepting the answer Jongosi. I'm sure you'll figure out the problem soon enough.

[jyore]

I had a similar issue...the apachectl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS command was the tell all: [Mon May 20 23:51:08 2013] [warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence . Adding the NameVirtualHost *:80 solved it

[Alex Khimich]

For googlerslike me use this: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.domain.tld ServerAlias domain.tld *.domain.tld DocumentRoot /www/domain </VirtualHost>

[softvar]

Perfect! Was looking for this one for a long time (Y)

[Bobort]

I tried NameVirtualHost, but it is being deprecated. And it didn't work for me anyway.