ServerAlias www.example.com is not recognized

Question

Below is my config file:

NameVirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80  

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80>  
    ServerAdmin [email protected]  
    ServerName domain1.com  
    ServerAlias www.domain1.com   
    DocumentRoot /srv/www/domain1.com/public_html1/  
    ErrorLog /srv/www/domain1.com/logs/error.log  
    CustomLog /srv/www/domain1.com/logs/access.log combined  
</VirtualHost>  

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80>  
    ServerAdmin [email protected]  
    ServerName domain2.com  
    ServerAlias www.domain2.com  
    DocumentRoot /srv/www/domain2.com/public_html1/  
    ErrorLog /srv/www/domain2.com/logs/error.log  
    CustomLog /srv/www/domain2.com/logs/access.log combined  
</VirtualHost> 

The thing is when I put www.domain1.com into browser, apache2 doesn't retrieve the web page resides in /srv/www/domain1.com/public_html1/, instead, it gets the page from the default document root defined in another file. However, if I put www.domain2.com, everything works fine. I don't see any difference between two VirtualHost config block, so I wonder what does make the difference. BTW, I haven't put any .htaccess file under their document root.

Solution 1

Try checking your Apache config by issuing:

/usr/sbin/apache2ctl -S

I guess your "default" virtual host uses "www.domain1.com" as its ServerName, thus it responds to the request to "www.domain1.com".

On my machine this happened due to "www.domain1.com" being my machine's hostname. If ServerName is not specified, Apache tries to guess - causing the abovementioned problem.

I solved this by specifying "ServerName default" in sites-available/default.

This might be of some help as well:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/dns-caveats.html

Solution 2

If you are on Windows and probably using a ZendSever, than you MUST do next:

Open file "hosts" in directory "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc"

Add

127.0.0.1 www.domain1.com

under

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 domain1.com

---

It should look like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost

127.0.0.1 domain1.com

127.0.0.1 www.domain1.com

127.0.0.1 domain2.com

127.0.0.1 www.domain2.com

127.0.0.1 domain3.com

127.0.0.1 www.domain3.com

All domains need to be registered in this file.

Solution 3

Just wanted to say that this caught me out too, and changing the ServerName in the default apache site worked for me, as did simply disabling that site using

a2dissite default

Then reloading apache.