Re: [cobalt-users] Re: cobalt-users digest, Vol 1 #471 - 19 msgs

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:58 PM 3/12/00 -0500, you wrote:

> Sure I can be more specific. If I have http://www.newwebsite.com   as my
> main site and then I have an alias of www.newwebpro.com pointing to the
> exact same site, how can I get email to work for newwebpro.com since it is
> not a real site. Its just an alias for newwebsite.com. I found one way to
> make it work but I don't know if it is the best way. What I did was create a
> virtual site for newwebpro.com and only allowed email to be accepted.

Then you have a separate set of mailboxes for newwebpro, I presume.  Am I 
correct.  Do you have a lot of individual people and mailboxes?  If so 
you're wasting some system resources, but if your system isn't heavily 
loaded, that's not a problem in and of itself.

What do you mean when you say you ONLY allow email to be accepted?  There's 
no way to turn off webhosting in the gui interface that I know of...

> In the
> httpd.conf I have ServerAlias of newwebpro.com.

I presume you mean that this is in the virtual host context for 
newwebsite.com.  Do you have only www.newwebpro.com or only newwebpro.com 
as the ServerAlias, or do you have both?  If only one, then which one?

> There is however a space
> created for the virtual site of newwebpro.com. But the space is not
> displayed when I try to go there. Instead it points to newwebsite.com like
> it is supposed to.

I've not found in Apache documentation any specific documentation of 
behavior when you point one domain name to two specific different sites, so 
I really don't like this behavior; it may work now for you, but it may not 
work in all circumstances for everyone.  It may work fine for this site but 
not for the next one you set up.  The behavior is what we call "undefined" 
as far as I can tell.  For this reason, I wouldn't do it this way.

>  And the email also works for both. I hope this makes
> sense. Everything works like it is supposed to.

Then the question is "how is it supposed to work?"

Do you want separate mailboxes for both domains?  Is, for example, 
<jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> a different person that <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, or are 
they one and the same?

If every email address at one domain is the same as every emaail address as 
the other, and the recipients are the same people, then here's what I'd do:

I would NOT have <newwebpro.com> set up on the system at all.

I WOULD have DNS records set up for both, with the same IP#s.

I would have a DNS MX record for <newwebpro.com> pointing to the same 
mailserver that the DNS MX record for <newwebsite.com> points to.

I would manually place, inside the virtual host context for 
<newwebsite.com>, a ServerAlias line with both "www.newwebpro.com" and 
"newwebpro.com".

In the "/etc/virtusertable" file, under the line that reads

# Put custom additions below (Do not change/remove this line).

I'd have a line something like this:

@newwebpro.com   %1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

as documented at <www.sendmail.org/virtual-hosting.html>; it's for 
forwarding mail for a whole domain to the same addresses at another domain.

I'd also put "newwebpro.com" (without the quotes of course) into the 
sendmail.cw file, so sendmail knows it's okay to receive mail for this domain.

(Of course after changing /etc/virtusertable you need to reconvert it, and 
after changing /etc/sendmail.cw you need to restart sendmail.

> I just don't know if it is
> the best way or if there are other implications I am not aware of. And if
> this is the only way or best way I hope I helped some other people in the
> process.

Well, I hope I've given you some pointers above.  As usual, there's no 
"right" way, but at leat my way doesn't ask either sendmail or apache to 
make any undocumented decisions with undefined results that may or may not 
always work the same way.

Jeff

--
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>