Re: Configuring virtual servers without DNS

[James Harvard <james.harvard@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Actually I did manage to think my way around this, but thanks for the 
thoughts & advice none the less.

For what it's worth, here's what I did:
First of all, using the domain registering & DNS hosting firm's web 
interface I set up a new host for the domain (www1.thedomain.com) 
that was pointed at my server.  When that new DNS entry had 
propagated across the net I could then set up a new virtual host of 
www1.thedomain.com in WebTen and enter www.thedomain.com and 
thedomain.com as 'server aliases'.  Then when I changed the DNS 
entries for www.thedomain.com to point to my WT server, the content 
was ready & waiting as the DNS change propagated and visitors began 
to come to the new (my server's) IP.

But I still think it's a silly system that requires me to wait for 
the DNS to start pointing at my server before I can set up a virtual 
host!  My complaint still stands: without this work around it would 
mean that visitors would be hitting a nonexistent virtual host on my 
server before WT would allow me to set up that virtual host. As a 
great philosopher once said, "Doh!".

Is there nobody at Tenon who knows why WT needs to check DNS against 
virtual host setups?

More in sorrow (and cliche) than in anger,

James Harvard  ;-)

> At 4:57 PM +0000 11/11/00, James Harvard wrote:
> > WebTen in its finite wisdom won't let me set up a virtual host for 
> > the domain because it trys a DNS lookup and finds that the 
> > specified IP is not one assigned to my server.  This is rather 
> > inconvenient to say the least.
>
> To say the least. I fail to see why one cannot simply type the IP 
> address into the web admin.
>
> > Is this 'feature' really necessary, Tenon? ...  This is not A Good Thing.
>
> I recently blundered and configured a virtual host with DNS 
> configured so as to point this host to the OT stack on my dual-stack 
> setup. I caught my mistake and corrected the DNS within minutes but 
> it took weeks to get my WebTen back to normal.
>
> > So, now what I'm wondering is this:
> > Can I bypass the DNS check when setting up a new virtual host by 
> > adding the virual host manually to the appropriate (httpd.conf?) 
> > config file, before doing any detailed config via WT's admin server?
>
> I wouldn't recommend it. WebTen will do the lookup and if you look 
> at the web admin page for that virtual host, it will display, in 
> red, "DNS error!"
>
> I've had WT stop serving altogether for errors more minor than this.
>
> My recommendation for all things WebTen: Do it By the Book.

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