DNS and subdirectories

Rex__

Hello,

I am trying to get my DNS provider to point to a subdirectory on my server.

I have used the URL redirect of my IP to http://23.113.122.176/props/procast/

the problem is that whoever visits the site gets the following kind of URL in their browser's address textbox:

http://23.113.122.176/hello.htm

virtualhosts don't seem to work well on my blend of win32 and apache. I was wondering if there is some easy way to get a better URL in the browser's location field. In other words, I want to change:

http://23.113.122.176/hello.htm

to this:

http://www.procast.net/hello.htm

Working with subdirectories is proving to be really difficult. I don't know networking very well, and I was hoping some net wiz could help.

ereptur

this is generally considered a no no in the dns world. DNS is meant to resolve a name to an IP, not a name to an IP/folder.
As for your DNS host, since they are redirecting to an IP instead of recording your domain as your IP, it is not possible to have it display anything more than your IP in the browser address bar.

You will need to have your DNS host to make an A entry in their records that states that www.procast.net = 23.x.x.x instead of redirecting to that IP.

Then you can just put a PHP script in your document root that redirects from / to /props/procast using a header("Location: /props/procast"); command.

tsinka

Hi,

ereptur is right, DNS just tells us something about hosts and corresponding ip addresses (and some other stuff that isn't neccessary in this case).

How does your VirtualHost (httpd.conf) and your redirect look like ?

Rex__

hello erupter, but i might have more than one domain for my IP, with a subfolder for each one. i am guessing that your solution will only work for one of my subfolders.

hello tsinka,

this is what i have tried for the virtualhost:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName www.procast.net
DocumentRoot "c:/apache/htdocs/props/procast"
</VirtualHost>

i think i have also tried the following:

DocumentRoot "c:\apache\htdocs\props\procast"

DocumentRoot /props/procast

and probably others that i can't remember.

should i use <VirtualHost www.procast.net> instead of <VirtualHost *> ? should i use the domain or document root into in <directory> ?

i have also tried basic rewriting of the url, but i am horrible at regular expressions.

tsinka

Hi,

I saw apache installations where using * instead of an ip address caused problems.

Example of a VirtualHost configuration. For each IP-Adress you have to add the following line(s) once:

NameVirtualHost <ip>:80
NameVirtualHost <ip>:443 (is you use ssl)

Example:

NameVirtualHost 23.113.122.176:80

<VirtualHost 23.113.122.176:80>
ServerName www.procast.net
DocumentRoot DocumentRoot "c:/apache/htdocs/props/procast"
</VirtualHost>

But your configuration should work anyways.
Are the above configuration values like ip address just examples ? www.procast.net seems to be another site than your's. Can you give me the url so I can see what else could cause that behaviour ?

Rex__

i got the domain working. it seems that my DNS host takes a while to update my changes. i accidentally left the entry to URLRedirect instead of Address, and that seemed to give me problems with testing my apache virtualhost. I changed it back to A, waited a while, and then everything seems to work fine.

This is great to know since i might be using other domains with this ip.

thanks for all your help