What am I getting wrong in my Apache configuration?

Question

I'm running an AWS setup that currently consists of an ELB pointing to a single EC2 instance. The instance is running Ubuntu 12.04.2 and Apache 2.22.2. I've setup several subdomains on the server in the past. I'm trying to set another one up today, but I'm beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what I missed. I'm sure it's some little step that I've overlooked or gotten not-quite-right.

My DNS records are setup using Route 53. I logged in to the AWS console and added a new CNAME record for my server. We'll call it samael.example.com. It looks like this:

samael.example.com. 3600 IN CNAME web-pool-xxxxxxxxxx.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com. 

That seems to be working just fine, as pointing my browser to sameael.example.com brings up the default VirtualHost.

So, all I have left to do now is create another VirtualHost config file, right?

mkdir /http/www/samael.example.com touch /httpd/www/samael.example.com/index.html cd /etc/apache2/sites-available sudo cp dav.example.com samael.example.com sudo sed -i 's/dav.example.com/samael.example.com/g' samael.example.com cd ../sites-enabled sudo ln -s ../sites-available/samael.example.com sudo apachectl restart 

That should be it, right? But when I point my browser to samael.example.com, it's still pointing to the default VirtualHost. What step am I skipping?

cat samael.example.com

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerName samael.example.com ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /httpd/www/samael.example.com <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None </Directory> <Directory /httpd/www/samael.example.com> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/samael.example.com-error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog /var/log/apache2/samael.example.com-access.log combined 

EDIT:

Per the request in the comments:

sudo apache2ctl -S VirtualHost configuration: wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers: *:80 is a NameVirtualHost default server dav.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/dav.example.com:1) port 80 namevhost dav.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/dav.example.com:1) port 80 namevhost dev.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/dev.example.com:1) port 80 namevhost example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/example.com:1) port 80 namevhost new.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/new.example.com:1) port 80 namevhost samael.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/samael.example.com:1) port 80 namevhost stage.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/stage.example.com:1) port 80 namevhost test.example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/test.example.com:1) Syntax OK 

The output of this is a bit puzzling to me. I would expect the default to be example.com rather than dav.example.com. The configuration file for example.com has ServerAlias * defined in it.

Answer 1

It's possible that your vhost configuration file is not being seen by apache, either for lack of an include directive, or a lack of permissions.

Ensure that in your main configuration file you have a directive like

Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/* 

If it is in a conditional block, such as <IfDefine VHOSTS>, ensure the condition is evaluating to true (eg. by ensuring the correct define is specified or the correct module is loaded).

Also, ensure that whichever user apache is running as (usually apache) has permission to read the file and enumerate the sites-enabled directory. Specifically, it needs read and execute on the sites-enabled directory, and read on all the configuration files in sites-enabled.

Per your edit, it is probable that the ServerAlias * directive you have is confusing things. This is not the way to designate a default vhost. The default vhost, with name-based virtual hosting, is used only when no other virtual host matches (ServerAlias or ServerName), and is simply the first one that is loaded, in alphabetical order. This is how the dav.example.com host was most likely chosen. To overcome this, usually the intended virtual host configuration file is named something like 00_default_vhost.conf.

Matching is also done in the order files are read. So, any sites that aren't dav.example.com or dev.example.com will be matched by example.com with the wildcard alias.