G'day Guys,For some time I've wanted to host multiple websites from a single ReadyNAS unit...I haven't had the time to investigate it.1. Backup all the .conf files in /etc/frontview/apache2. Backup all the .conf files in /etc/frontview/apache - so you can restore the originals if you screw something up !!!3. Edit /etc/frontview/apache/Virtual.confOriginal file<VirtualHost _default_:80> SSLEngine off RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]</VirtualHost>Modified fileNameVirtualHost *:80<VirtualHost *:80> SSLEngine off RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]</VirtualHost>4. Create a new my-virtual.conf file in /etc/frontview/apache/addons, this way it will be auto loaded without modifying any other files. The example below has definitions for two websites....add/remove as required.my-virtual.conf<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.example.com DocumentRoot /path/to/example.com <Directory /path/to/example.com> Options Indexes Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> <Location /index.html> SetHandler none Order Allow,Deny Allow from all </Location> SSLEngine off</VirtualHost><VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.domain.net DocumentRoot /path/to/domain.net <Directory /path/to/domain.net> Options Indexes Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> <Location /index.html> SetHandler none Order Allow,Deny Allow from all </Location> SSLEngine off</VirtualHost>5. shutdown apache, killall apache-ssl6. restart apache, apache-ssl -f /etc/frontview/apache/httpd.conf7. All done :D CAVEATS1. Toggling the state of HTTP within Frontview rewrites Virtual.conf so the above changes will be lost.ReadyNAS Team1. It would be nice if the above changes could be made to the format of /etc/frontview/apache/Virtual.conf, so that changes aren't overwritten2. I currently have to add the Location element to undo a global definition within httpd.conf. It would be awesome if this was removed from httpd.conf and added to Virtual.conf as...NameVirtualHost *:80<VirtualHost *:80> <Location /index.html> SetHandler server-status Order Deny,Allow Deny from all </Location> SSLEngine off RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]</VirtualHost>Cheers,David

why not using /etc/frontview/apache/addons/ for this ?

super-poussin wrote:why not using /etc/frontview/apache/addons/ for this ?Step 4 uses that location, however, the way /etc/frontview/apache/Virtual.conf has been defined....it really doesn't allow expansion, hence the reason for modifying it. You can't have mixed declarations of <VirtualHost _default_:80> and <VirtualHost *:80> as the first one declared will always be used.

Nice how-to... thanks for sharing.Does this still require these steps?http://www.readynas.com/?p=135Currently, I've got my blog-thingy hosted on the ReadyNAS Pro. In Frontview, under the HTTP protocol I am redirecting HTTP traffic to the read-only HTTP share "webserver". How does your how-to fit in with this?Notice that when you try to go to my site http://home.bott.ca/ in automatically redirects to the webserver share (as I expect it would - http://home.bott.ca/webserver/).Do all websites have to be placed within this "webserver" share?I guess I'm just a bit confused as to how this works. If you've got any sites hosted on your NAS where you can provide an example, I'd love to see it in action.Regards,Dave

I don't use that option, I currently have it set to 'None Selected'. Using that options adds an additional rewrite rule to /etc/frontview/apache/Virtual.conf, something like this...RewriteRule ^/$ /webserver [R,L]Instead, I have a single share called 'Sites' with a folder for each site that I have configured, then the my-virtual.conf sets the DocumentRoot to the specific Site folder. But I have only done this to make my life easy for updating content. Each site could exist on totally different shares, there is no restriction on that.I'm not hosting anything elaborate, just some firefox extensions and other stuff that I hack around with, here's two sites that are currently hosted off my NAS...http://www.smugglr.nethttp://smugbrowser.introversion.com.au/beta

dbott67 wrote:Nice how-to... thanks for sharing.Does this still require these steps?http://www.readynas.com/?p=135No, actually the approach from this Howto is more flexible but requires more work and a lot more knowledge about how things "really work".dbott67 wrote:Currently, I've got my blog-thingy hosted on the ReadyNAS Pro. In Frontview, under the HTTP protocol I am redirecting HTTP traffic to the read-only HTTP share "webserver". How does your how-to fit in with this?Two totally different beasts. The way you do it will create a config similar to this:<VirtualHost _default_:80> SSLEngine off RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^/$ /website [R,L] RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]</VirtualHost>The important part is line 4 where all requests are redirected to the Share "website". That's what you already noticed here:dbott67 wrote:Notice that when you try to go to my site http://home.bott.ca/ in automatically redirects to the webserver share (as I expect it would - http://home.bott.ca/webserver/).While this works, it will just allow you to host one website on your NAS.Comes in the Howto. The important part here is that you can have not only one but several <VirtualHost ...> entries.This leads straight to your next question:dbott67 wrote:Do all websites have to be placed within this "webserver" share?No. Let's have a look at the VirtualHost definition:<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName www.example.com DocumentRoot /path/to/example.com <Directory /path/to/example.com> Options Indexes Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> <Location /index.html> SetHandler none Order Allow,Deny Allow from all </Location> SSLEngine off</VirtualHost>Notice line 3. The DocumentRoot ... tells Apache where to look for the files it should serve to the user. In this case this would be /path/to/example.comAlso important is line 2. The ServerName ... tells Apache what site this configuration is meant for.A simple, yet very abbreviated example:<VirtualHost *:80>ServerName server1.dyndns.orgDocumentRoot /website1(...)</VirtualHost><VirtualHost *:80>ServerName anotherserver.dyndns.orgDocumentRoot /website2(...)</VirtualHost>Now what happens when a request comes in is this: Apache will look in the headers for the host name the user wanted to address. Say the user requested "anotherserver.dyndns,org". Apache finds the defintion for that server, looks into the directory /website2 and will serve the file index.html if it's to be found there. (That's an overly simplistic explanation but you should get the drift). /website2 doesn't have to be a share, it just has to exist.Likewise, since all Apache cares about is the host name, not the IP address, "server1.dyndns.org" and "anotherserver.dyndns.org" may of course point to the same (your public) IP address.I really hope this was somewhat understandable since I tried to cramp many things in a "not too long to digest" post ;)-Stefan

Forum Discussion

devbobo

Aspirant

Nov 29, 2009

HOW TO: Hosting multiple websites

G'day Guys,

For some time I've wanted to host multiple websites from a single ReadyNAS unit...I haven't had the time to investigate it.

1. Backup all the .conf files in /etc/frontview/apache
2. Backup all the .conf files in /etc/frontview/apache - so you can restore the originals if you screw something up !!!

3. Edit /etc/frontview/apache/Virtual.conf

Original file


<VirtualHost _default_:80>
  SSLEngine off
  RewriteEngine on

  RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]
</VirtualHost>

Modified file


NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  SSLEngine off
  RewriteEngine on

  RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]
</VirtualHost>

4. Create a new my-virtual.conf file in /etc/frontview/apache/addons, this way it will be auto loaded without modifying any other files. The example below has definitions for two websites....add/remove as required.

my-virtual.conf


<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.example.com
  DocumentRoot /path/to/example.com
  <Directory /path/to/example.com>
    Options Indexes
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
  <Location /index.html>
    SetHandler none
    Order Allow,Deny
    Allow from all
  </Location>
  SSLEngine off
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.domain.net
  DocumentRoot /path/to/domain.net
  <Directory /path/to/domain.net>
    Options Indexes
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Directory>
  <Location /index.html>
    SetHandler none
    Order Allow,Deny
    Allow from all
  </Location>
  SSLEngine off
</VirtualHost>

5. shutdown apache, killall apache-ssl
6. restart apache, apache-ssl -f /etc/frontview/apache/httpd.conf
7. All done :D

CAVEATS
1. Toggling the state of HTTP within Frontview rewrites Virtual.conf so the above changes will be lost.

ReadyNAS Team
1. It would be nice if the above changes could be made to the format of /etc/frontview/apache/Virtual.conf, so that changes aren't overwritten
2. I currently have to add the Location element to undo a global definition within httpd.conf. It would be awesome if this was removed from httpd.conf and added to Virtual.conf as...


NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  <Location /index.html>                                                              
    SetHandler server-status                                                          
    Order Deny,Allow                                                                  
    Deny from all                                                                     
  </Location> 
  SSLEngine off
  RewriteEngine on

  RewriteRule ^/admin/(.*)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/admin/$1 [R,L]
</VirtualHost>

Cheers,

David

ReadyNAS Developers Network

129 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Feb 16, 2011
Port forwarding is for WAN access (i.e. over the internet).
stinhambo
Aspirant
Feb 20, 2011
Ok so I'm using the PHP 1.4 add-on and I can access phpMyAdmin ok as well as static sites. The big problem is .htaccess and mod_rewrite. I get 443 errors.

None of the threads on this forum seem to help and I'm getting a little bit frustrated as I just want a system that works.

Can someone give me a pointer (and some code!) as to what I should do to enable mod_rewrite?

I get the following error.log message -

[Mon Feb 21 09:24:45 2011] [error] [client 192.168.0.192] Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that RewriteRule directive is forbidden: /c/sites/mysite/
WhoCares_
Mentor
Feb 20, 2011
Since I don't know how you configured your virtual host, this is just a generic advice. Under the <Directory ....> statement for your master directory (DocumentRoot) add:
Options +FollowSymLinks

-Stefan
stinhambo
Aspirant
Feb 20, 2011
Hi Stefan!

Here is an example from my Virtual Host which is in /etc/frontview/apache/addons/my-virtual.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName xxx.xxx.dynalias.com
DocumentRoot /c/sites/xxx/
SSLEngine off
RewriteEngine on
DirectoryIndex index.php
Options All
</VirtualHost>
WhoCares_
Mentor
Feb 20, 2011
Ok, so you'd need to add:
<Directory /c/sites/xxx>
Options +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

Somewhere between <VirtualHost ...> and </VirtualHost>. Don't forget to restart Apache afterwards.

-Stefan
stinhambo
Aspirant
Feb 20, 2011
No dice :(

Still getting 403 errors. The error log still gives the same error.

Yes I did restart apache!
stinhambo
Aspirant
Feb 20, 2011
Any other diagnostics I could run to make sure nothing is conflicting?
stinhambo
Aspirant
Feb 20, 2011
My .htaccess is -

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
WhoCares_
Mentor
Feb 20, 2011
403 means "no access". Or in short: the process apache is running under doesn't have sufficient file system rights to access the data of your vhosts. You can try running
cd /c/sites
chmod -R a+r *

-Stefan
stinhambo
Aspirant
Feb 20, 2011
Still not working. Tried it with a static html page. Works fine without .htaccess but I get the 403 if I add the .htaccess.