Re: [cobalt-users] Seems ServerAlias domain without www isn'tadded anymore?

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alfredo wrote:

> >On the raq2 the ServerAlias mydomain.com was automatically added by the GUI
> >when setting up www.mydomain.com but now it seems on the raq3 it doesn't do
> >this anymore.....
> >
> >Can I change this anywhere manually so it is added automatically?
> 
> Raq3 treats this as a separate A record

Please explain this new and heretofore unknown functionality more
clearly, since it doesn't happen on any Cobalt RaQ3 I've ever worked on;
inquiring minds want to know <smile>.

DNS has NOTHING to do with setting up sites on your RaQ.  Or on anyone
else's RaQ; they're completely separate services.

You've always had to add a record to DNS wherever domain.com's zone-file
is hosted (not necessarily on your RaQ at all) for www.domain.com; it
can be either an A record or a CNAME record (though most of us prefer A
records for reasons I've gone into before, CNAME records work fine).

And if you want "domain.com" to work for the same site, you also need to
add a (CNAME or A) record for "domain.com" pointing to the same IP#, or
to the same hostname, if you want "domain.com" to work.

That's all DNS has to do with the issue, and it works exactly the same
way on the original RaQ, the RaQ2, the RaQ3, the RaQ4, and in fact any
Linux, Unix, Apple, or Windows-based system.

> and that's useful because it
> then allows you to set up various sites with all kinds of hostnames
> on that domain -- eg ideas.domain.com, sales.domain.com.,
> service.domain.com.

I've done that on plenty of RaQ2s as well.  Prior to the RaQ3, to make
sure the "domain.com" site appears properly you must either create the
"www.domain.com (or whichever domain you want to appear when
"domain.com' is put into the browser) first, or (and more preferably),
remove or comment out the "ServerAlias domain.com" lines for all the
xxx.domain.com sites except the one you want "domain.com" to point to. 
If you use the latter method you need to restart the httpd daemon for it
to take effect.

> At any rate, it's pretty easy to do through the
> gui's dns section and I wouldn't suggest changing any of the dns
> rules to force this kind of configuration creation.

How would you CHANGE DNS rules?  I'd love to know what you mean by this
sentence.

So, to answer the original poster's question:

To add the proper server alias, when creating the domain, simply check
"Web Access by Domain".  Which I've already written elsewhere, and which
is well-covered in the list-archives.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
nobaloney.net
P. O. Box 52672
Riverside, CA  92517
voice: (909) 787-8589  *  fax: (909) 782-0205