Forum OpenACS Development: Multiple DNS and subsites

Is it possible to easily have subdomains pointed to their respective acs-subsites?

I want to set them all up under OpenACS -> Main Site. As the following scenario:
www.iurix.com /
site1.iurix.com /site1/
site2.iurix.com /site2/

I tried to create a new host-node map, but it seems the solution is not there.

eventeasy.iurix.com 405572 /eventeasy/

I could easily assign the redirection task to Nginx, but in the application level, the scenario wouldn't be solved yet. I want to have DNS and subsites working independently. Whether related or entirely different subsites, all of them under Main Site.

Is it possible?

The server was restarted. Nevertheless I did not see the expected result.

Hence, the result is to have eventeasy.iurix.com virtually assigned to its rootdir /, when in fact it's pointed to http://iurix.com/eventeasy/. All of them under the very same umbrella: Mainsite. That's why they are accessible across different DNS'es and the same subsite "/instance"

I'd understand if OpenACS is only able to redirect to its subsite, such as: the user types http://eventeasy.iurix.com, then OACS redirects automatically to http://eventeasy.iurix.com/eventeasy/ and serve the page.

Let me get this one rolling and I will be more than glad to fix that issue with session's misbehaves.

There could even be eventeasy.iurix.com/eventeasy/.

But, It seems the solution is one step further, in the application level. It requires something similar to example:

The user access eventeasy.iurix.com, OACS core notices the DNS is within hostnode's table, that the triple (eventeasy.iurix.com, 9589839, /eventeasy/)

OACS serves the entire subsite to the user as if it is /

In the worst scenario it would impact url's structure, and that means a core change.

Is there any other possibility?

In the past, with oacs-5.5 iirc, I ran multiple oacs sites from one ip address.

Each site was served from a different config.tcl, different port, different oacsroot file and different database; No host-node mapping.

A proxy server (apache proxy?) handled the calls between each domain:80 and each oacs:unique_port (forward and reverse).

If you try this, you might want to set the acs-tcl parameter SuppressHttpPort to 1 (and restart).

cheers,
Ben

A much more general virtual hosting approach is available in NaviServer (run multiple servers from a single nsd process, which might or might not have the same blueprints), but that approach is not integrated with OpenACS, since in OpenACS we try to keep AOLserver compatibility.

All releases of OpenACS are tested thoroughly (regression test, OpenACS installation tests, DotLRN, frequently used packages, ...). In addition, OpenACS.org is running as close as possible on the HEAD release (currently the newest version of the oacs-5-9 branch), so on the 70 packages in use on OpenACS.org, bugs are earlier detected.

If someone finds a bug (in templating, core, ...) please submit a proper bug report, where this issue can be addressed. I am not aware of any changed "ad_conn behavior used to generate forms". Such changes would affect openacs.org substantially. Vague and nebulous statements are not constructive and do not help.

You can definitely map a domain name to a subsite, and serve that subsite as the root of the mapped domain. Is that what you are trying to do?

You should not need a proxy server, but if you are using one in addition to AOLserver or Naviserver the configuration is more complicated.

There are an abundance of benefits to switching to naviserver and upgrading to oacs-5-9, if the system isn't using ecommerce package.

Here is an example of host-node mapping working as I believe you expect. One of the host-node sites: http://dekka.com which points to subsite: http://or97.net/dekka-com
(It just serves a static page right now; until we re-tackle the various templating / form issues.) No proxy is used.

That's exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. It's still not clear to me how to achieve it.

Is hostnode feature on OpenACS 5.7 and AOLServer 4.5 simply broken?

Best wishes

Concerning the request of Iuri: i did some tests and fixed a few issues (mostly IPv6) and the following testing scenarios work fine:

Testing setup (A):
- http-port: 8009
- https-port: 8443
- base-hostname: localhost
- alternate-hostname: hugo
- main-subsite: /
- alternate-subsite: /hugo
- host-node map: hostname "hugo" -> /hugo/
- apm-parameter (acs-tcl): UseHostnameDomainforReg: 0

In this setup, the subsite (here: /hugo/) has to be given explicit read permission for public, otherwise, one cannot login, since subsite/register won't work (one needs already permissions to reach the subsite main node). Therefore, the site-admin has to grant read permissions to the public explicitly.

Other than this, everything looks ok with setup (A), the subsite works with http and https.

Testing setup (B):
- same as above, but:
- apm-parameter (acs-tcl): UseHostnameDomainforReg: 1

When UseHostnameDomainforReg is activated:
- login is redirected to the main site; the return_url as well.
- login cookies are set on the main-site and are not available on the subsite via the browser (maybe when setting "CookieDomain" and use "domain cookies" and appropriate sub-domain host names; not tested).
- This means that out of the box the user does not stay on the subsite but has to do all authorized work on the main site (which makes management of different users on subsite useless).

Also setup (B) works as well with the newest version in the oacs-5-9 branch. There were some issues in earlier version, but the actual version is fine in this respect. No nginx is involved.

For more details. see: https://openacs.org/bugtracker/openacs/patch?patch_number=848

all the best
-g

It works (here) using today's install-ns script and OpenACS HEAD via cvs .. that's ns 4.99.12. Minor changes were made to configuration settings for adjusting to system running FreeBSD 10.3 stable using different ns and pg user and ns group.

Here's the host node mapped subsites and domains (using port 8000) with original domain or97.net, so you can confirm yourself:
/test1/test2/ dekka.com
/test3/ bitscafe.com

The logs show repeats of these errors:

"Error: Unknown driver: nssock_v4. Only know nssock, nsunix, nsssl, nsssle, nsopenssl"
which originates from util_driver_info.

Are there any errors in the logs on your site?
Want to try oacs-HEAD to help isolate the issue?

Ben

or97.net is running 5.9.1d4 from git without errors for 4.99.11 and 4.99.12.

Would it be useful if I test oacs-5-9 branch from cvs (or some other configuration)?

installed data model. Upon restart, cannot login. Get this:
Error in include template "/var/www/oacs-HEAD/packages/acs-subsite/lib/login": wrong # args: should be "array set arrayName list"

I'll wait for further direction.
cheers,
Ben