docs/manual/vhosts/mass.xml

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<manualpage metafile="mass.xml.meta">
<parentdocument href="./">Virtual Hosts</parentdocument>
   <title>Dynamically Configured Mass Virtual Hosting</title>

<summary>

    <p>This document describes how to efficiently serve an
    arbitrary number of virtual hosts with the Apache httpd webserver. 
    </p>

</summary>

<section id="motivation"><title>Motivation</title>

    <p>The techniques described here are of interest if your
    <code>httpd.conf</code> contains many
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> sections that are
    substantially the same, for example:</p>

<example>
NameVirtualHost 111.22.33.44<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName                 www.customer-1.com<br />
    DocumentRoot        /www/hosts/www.customer-1.com/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/hosts/www.customer-1.com/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName                 www.customer-2.com<br />
    DocumentRoot        /www/hosts/www.customer-2.com/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/hosts/www.customer-2.com/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;<br />
# blah blah blah<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName                 www.customer-N.com<br />
    DocumentRoot        /www/hosts/www.customer-N.com/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/hosts/www.customer-N.com/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
</example>

    <p>The basic idea is to replace all of the static
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> configurations with a mechanism
    that works them out dynamically. This has a number of
    advantages:</p>

    <ol>
      <li>Your configuration file is smaller, so Apache starts
      more quickly and uses less memory.</li>

      <li>Adding virtual hosts is simply a matter of creating the
      appropriate directories in the filesystem and entries in the
      DNS - you don't need to reconfigure or restart Apache.</li>
    </ol>

    <p>The main disadvantage is that you cannot have a different log file for
    each virtual host; however, if you have many virtual hosts, doing
    this can be a bad idea anyway, because of the number of file
    descriptors needed. It is better to log to a pipe or a fifo, and arrange for
    the process at the other end to distribute the logs to the customers.
    (This can also be used to accumulate statistics, etc.).</p>

</section>

<section id="overview"><title>Overview</title>

    <p>A virtual host is defined by two pieces of information: its
    IP address, and the contents of the <code>Host:</code> header
    in the HTTP request. The dynamic mass virtual hosting technique
    used here is based on automatically inserting this information into the
    pathname of the file that is used to satisfy the request. This
    can be most easily done by using <module>mod_vhost_alias</module> 
    with Apache 2.0. Alternatively, <module>mod_rewrite</module> can be used.
    Both of these modules are disabled by default; you must enable
    one of them when configuring and building Apache if you want to
    use this technique.</p>

    <p>A couple of things need to be `faked' to make the dynamic
    virtual host look like a normal one. The most important is the
    server name, which is used by Apache to generate
    self-referential URLs etc. It is configured with the
    <code>ServerName</code> directive, and it is available to CGIs
    via the <code>SERVER_NAME</code> environment variable. The
    actual value used at run time is controlled by the <directive
    module="core">UseCanonicalName</directive>
    setting. With <code>UseCanonicalName Off</code>, the server name
    is taken from the contents of the <code>Host:</code> header in the
    request. With <code>UseCanonicalName DNS</code>, it is taken from a
    reverse DNS lookup of the virtual host's IP address. The former
    setting is used for name-based dynamic virtual hosting, and the
    latter is used for IP-based hosting. If Apache cannot work out
    the server name because there is no <code>Host:</code> header,
    or the DNS lookup fails, then the value configured with
    <code>ServerName</code> is used instead.</p>

    <p>The other thing to `fake' is the document root (configured
    with <code>DocumentRoot</code> and available to CGIs via the
    <code>DOCUMENT_ROOT</code> environment variable). In a normal
    configuration, this is used by the core module when
    mapping URIs to filenames, but when the server is configured to
    do dynamic virtual hosting, that job must be taken over by another
    module (either <code>mod_vhost_alias</code> or
    <code>mod_rewrite</code>), which has a different way of doing
    the mapping. Neither of these modules is responsible for
    setting the <code>DOCUMENT_ROOT</code> environment variable so
    if any CGIs or SSI documents make use of it, they will get a
    misleading value.</p>

</section>

<section id="simple"><title>Simple Dynamic Virtual Hosts</title>

    <p>This extract from <code>httpd.conf</code> implements the
    virtual host arrangement outlined in the <a
    href="#motivation">Motivation</a> section above, but in a
    generic fashion using <code>mod_vhost_alias</code>.</p>

<example>
# get the server name from the Host: header<br />
UseCanonicalName Off<br />
<br />
# this log format can be split per-virtual-host based on the first field<br />
LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
# include the server name in the filenames used to satisfy requests<br />
VirtualDocumentRoot /www/hosts/%0/docs<br />
VirtualScriptAlias  /www/hosts/%0/cgi-bin
</example>

    <p>This configuration can be changed into an IP-based virtual
    hosting solution by just turning <code>UseCanonicalName
    Off</code> into <code>UseCanonicalName DNS</code>. The server
    name that is inserted into the filename is then derived from
    the IP address of the virtual host.</p>

</section>

<section id="homepages"><title>A Virtually Hosted Homepages System</title>

    <p>This is an adjustment of the above system, tailored for an
    ISP's homepages server. Using a slightly more complicated
    configuration, we can select substrings of the server name to
    use in the filename so that, for example, the documents for
    <code>www.user.isp.com</code> are found in
    <code>/home/user/</code>. It uses a single <code>cgi-bin</code>
    directory instead of one per virtual host.</p>

<example>
# all the preliminary stuff is the same as above, then<br />
<br />
# include part of the server name in the filenames<br />
VirtualDocumentRoot /www/hosts/%2/docs<br />
<br />
# single cgi-bin directory<br />
ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/std-cgi/<br />
</example>

    <p>There are examples of more complicated
    <code>VirtualDocumentRoot</code> settings in the
    <module>mod_vhost_alias</module> documentation.</p>

</section>

<section id="combinations"><title>Using Multiple Virtual
	Hosting Systems on the Same Server</title>

    <p>With more complicated setups, you can use Apache's normal
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> directives to control the
    scope of the various virtual hosting configurations. For
    example, you could have one IP address for general customers' homepages,
    and another for commercial customers, with the following setup.
    This can, of course, be combined with conventional
    <code>&lt;VirtualHost&gt;</code> configuration sections.</p>

<example>
UseCanonicalName Off<br />
<br />
LogFormat "%V %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
<br />
&lt;Directory /www/commercial&gt;<br />
<indent>
    Options FollowSymLinks<br />
    AllowOverride All<br />
</indent>
&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;Directory /www/homepages&gt;<br />
<indent>
    Options FollowSymLinks<br />
    AllowOverride None<br />
</indent>
&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.44&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName www.commercial.isp.com<br />
    <br />
    CustomLog logs/access_log.commercial vcommon<br />
    <br />
    VirtualDocumentRoot /www/commercial/%0/docs<br />
    VirtualScriptAlias  /www/commercial/%0/cgi-bin<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;<br />
<br />
&lt;VirtualHost 111.22.33.45&gt;<br />
<indent>
    ServerName www.homepages.isp.com<br />
    <br />
    CustomLog logs/access_log.homepages vcommon<br />
    <br />
    VirtualDocumentRoot /www/homepages/%0/docs<br />
    ScriptAlias         /cgi-bin/ /www/std-cgi/<br />
</indent>
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;
</example>

</section>

<section id="ipbased"><title>More Efficient IP-Based Virtual Hosting</title>

    <p>The configuration changes suggested to turn <a href="#simple">the first
    example</a> into an IP-based virtual hosting setup result in
    a rather inefficient setup. A new DNS lookup is required for every
    request. To avoid this overhead, the filesystem can be arranged to
    correspond to the IP addresses, instead of to the host names, thereby
    negating the need for a DNS lookup. Logging will also have to be adjusted
    to fit this system.</p>

<example>
# get the server name from the reverse DNS of the IP address<br />
UseCanonicalName DNS<br />
<br />
# include the IP address in the logs so they may be split<br />
LogFormat "%A %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
# include the IP address in the filenames<br />
VirtualDocumentRootIP /www/hosts/%0/docs<br />
VirtualScriptAliasIP  /www/hosts/%0/cgi-bin<br />
</example>

</section>

<section id="simple.rewrite"><title>Simple Dynamic
    Virtual Hosts Using <module>mod_rewrite</module></title>

    <p>This extract from <code>httpd.conf</code> does the same
    thing as <a href="#simple">the first example</a>. The first
    half is very similar to the corresponding part above, except for
    some changes, required for backward compatibility and to make the
    <code>mod_rewrite</code> part work properly; the second half
    configures <code>mod_rewrite</code> to do the actual work.</p>

    <p>There are a couple of especially tricky bits: by default,
    <code>mod_rewrite</code> runs before other URI translation
    modules (<code>mod_alias</code> etc.) - so if you wish to use these modules,    <code>mod_rewrite</code> must be configured to accommodate
    them. Also, some magic is required to do a
    per-dynamic-virtual-host equivalent of
    <code>ScriptAlias</code>.</p>

<example>
# get the server name from the Host: header<br />
UseCanonicalName Off<br />
<br />
# splittable logs<br />
LogFormat "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" vcommon<br />
CustomLog logs/access_log vcommon<br />
<br />
&lt;Directory /www/hosts&gt;<br />
<indent>
    # ExecCGI is needed here because we can't force<br />
    # CGI execution in the way that ScriptAlias does<br />
    Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI<br />
</indent>
&lt;/Directory&gt;<br />
<br />
# now for the hard bit<br />
<br />
RewriteEngine On<br />
<br />
# a ServerName derived from a Host: header may be any case at all<br />
RewriteMap  lowercase  int:tolower<br />
<br />
## deal with normal documents first:<br />
# allow Alias /icons/ to work - repeat for other aliases<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/icons/<br />
# allow CGIs to work<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/cgi-bin/<br />
# do the magic<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$  /www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/docs/$1<br />
<br />
## and now deal with CGIs - we have to force a MIME type<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/cgi-bin/<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$  /www/hosts/${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}/cgi-bin/$1  [T=application/x-httpd-cgi]<br />
<br />
# that's it!
</example>

</section>

<section id="homepages.rewrite"><title>A
    Homepages System Using <code>mod_rewrite</code></title>

    <p>This does the same thing as <a href="#homepages">the second
    example</a>.</p>

<example>
RewriteEngine on<br />
<br />
RewriteMap   lowercase  int:tolower<br />
<br />
# allow CGIs to work<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/cgi-bin/<br />
<br />
# check the hostname is right so that the RewriteRule works<br />
RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^www\.[a-z-]+\.isp\.com$<br />
<br />
# concatenate the virtual host name onto the start of the URI<br />
# the [C] means do the next rewrite on the result of this one<br />
RewriteRule  ^(.+)  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}$1  [C]<br />
<br />
# now create the real file name<br />
RewriteRule  ^www\.([a-z-]+)\.isp\.com/(.*) /home/$1/$2<br />
<br />
# define the global CGI directory<br />
ScriptAlias  /cgi-bin/  /www/std-cgi/
</example>

</section>

<section id="xtra-conf"><title>Using a Separate Virtual
    Host Configuration File</title>

    <p>This arrangement uses more advanced <module>mod_rewrite</module>
    features to work out the translation from virtual host to document
    root, from a separate configuration file. This provides more
    flexibility, but requires more complicated configuration.</p>

    <p>The <code>vhost.map</code> file should look something like
    this:</p>

<example>
www.customer-1.com  /www/customers/1<br />
www.customer-2.com  /www/customers/2<br />
# ...<br />
www.customer-N.com  /www/customers/N<br />
</example>

    <p>The <code>httpd.conf</code> should contain the following:</p>

<example>
RewriteEngine on<br />
<br />
RewriteMap   lowercase  int:tolower<br />
<br />
# define the map file<br />
RewriteMap   vhost      txt:/www/conf/vhost.map<br />
<br />
# deal with aliases as above<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               !^/icons/<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               !^/cgi-bin/<br />
RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^(.+)$<br />
# this does the file-based remap<br />
RewriteCond  ${vhost:%1}                  ^(/.*)$<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$                      %1/docs/$1<br />
<br />
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}               ^/cgi-bin/<br />
RewriteCond  ${lowercase:%{SERVER_NAME}}  ^(.+)$<br />
RewriteCond  ${vhost:%1}                  ^(/.*)$<br />
RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$                      %1/cgi-bin/$1 [T=application/x-httpd-cgi]
</example>

</section>
</manualpage>