Forum OpenACS Q&A: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how?

1: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how?

Posted by Tom Lazar on 03/29/03 10:34 PM

Now that I have converted my (static) blog under apache to lars-blogger and openacs (!) I, of course, want to make them available to the public. the problem is this: i've got an existing apache-installation in place on the machine which i can't replace with aolserver, because of the virtual hosts that i'm serving there for other people. what i want to do is to have one particular domain (under which the blog is served) be served by aolserver on port 80 and all the other domains by apache also on port 80 how can this be done? i can't imagine, that this would be such an unusual request, or are all of you guys running only one site per machine? from my initial searching, it seems that mod_rewrite could do the trick and i remember from my servlet programming days (shiver!) that mod_jserv did something similar for tomcat on port 8080... any ideas? thanks!

2: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 1)

Posted by Tom Lazar on 03/29/03 10:41 PM

when will I learn? first you look , then you ask... I just realised from searching the forum here, that what I'm wanting is mod_aolserver. I'll look into that first and come back with specific questions later, if i should get stuck...

3: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 2)

Posted by Tom Lazar on 03/29/03 10:49 PM

no, wait

now i'm even more confused...

after reading the documentation that comes with mod_aolserver i get the feeling that its purpose is to *replace* AolServer with apache.

that's not necessarily what I want... I'm looking for a way for the two webservers to coexist.

so i'm back to asking again... what must i do in order to get the two together without resorting to port numbers other than 80?

any input appreciated!

thanks,

tom

4: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 03/29/03 11:05 PM

Tom,

You can setup apache as a reverse proxy to AOLserver running on another port.

If I recall, you need to setup ProxyPass declarations in the apache config file.

I actually used this to proxy AOLserver running on a different machine, but I think it would work the same if they are all on the same machine.

5: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 4)

Posted by Tom Lazar on 03/30/03 12:09 AM

Dave,

that was *exactly* what I was looking for!

thanks!

6: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 1)

Posted by Jerry Asher on 03/30/03 06:14 AM

I have an example buried in a comparison of AOLserver vs. Apache virtualhosting. The relevant section might look something like this:

 <VirtualHost *>
       ServerName photos.hollyjerry.org
       proxypass / http://192.168.0.16:7000/
       proxypassreverse / http://192.168.0.16:7000/
  </VirtualHost>

7: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 4)

Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 03/30/03 02:37 PM

We have an Apache setup as a reverse proxy (on a different box).

It is set up to pull data from
http://someOpenACSserver.withAreallyLONGaddress.at.my.university:8000
when a user enters
http://nice.short.address.at.my.uni

It works, but for some reason the user is given back
http://someOpenACSserver.withAreallyLONGaddress.at.my.university:8000
after entering
http://nice.short.address.at.my.uni
(this setup works for other platforms without changing anything on the target machine).

I guess I have to tell AOLServer about this. If so where?

8: Re: Apache, AOLServer and Virtual Domains: how? (response to 7)

Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 03/30/03 09:00 PM

Here is what I have done so far:

I set SystemURL to http://nice.short.address.at.my.uni

Site Map -> ACS Kernel Parameters

I set hostname to nice.short.address.at.my.uni in the AOLServer config file (not sure if this was needed though)

After doing this I noticed an interesting behavior-whenever there is a lagging slash in an address ( http://nice.short.address.at.my.uni/dotlrn/ ) the short URL is returned, but an address without it /dotlrn/admin returns the long URL. I am going to revisit this after talking with the guy who set up the Apache proxy (rewrite rule weirdness?).