Each time you make a configuration change to the Apache server you must restart (or at the very least reload) the http service. Remember to start apache for the first time do:

systemctl start httpd.service

systemctl reload httpd.service

systemctl restart nftables.service

Now start the webserver with the default configuration.

First create some files to use as part of a new virtual host.

Create a directory to be the document root of your new virtual host. This is within a system directory, so use sudo. Give alice ownership and give the file group ownership of whatever alice's default group is.

  /var/www/html/myhost/
  

In that directory create a file called hello.html. Do this as alice. The contents of this file should be:

<html>
<body>
<h1>HOST</h1>
<p>
I am clever
</p>
</body>
</html>

Ensure apache will have access to the file and directory by checking that other has execute access on the directory and read access on the file. Alice obviously needs rwx on the directory and rw on the file. For both the directory and the file set the group permissions to none. More generous permissions or permission changes the default will be marked incorrect. This style of permissions and ownership is expected for all document roots and files you create in this tutorial.

Copy this file to data.html in the same directory, preserving ownership and permissions. So:

  /var/www/html/myhost/data.html
  

Once copied, change the word "HOST" in data.html to the word "DATA". Make no other changes.

When your web server is running, you will be able to direct your own computer's browser to your web page using an external URL. Eventually this will be something like:

http://yourmachinename/hello.html

Replace "yourmachinename" with the HOST version of your virtual machine. You can get that from the CONNECT tab of the control panel in the "VM WEB" entry, or by taking the last two octets of the VM IP and inserting them into "host-O3-O4.linuxzoo.net", or by running this easy-to-remember command:

[alice@alma10 dave]$ hostname -I
10.0.19.17
[alice@alma10 dave]$ hostname -I | tr ' ' '\n' | grep '^10\.' | sed -E 's/10\.0\.([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)/host-\1-\2.linuxzoo.net/'
host-19-17.linuxzoo.net

In linuxzoo, we give you 3 names for your machine. The HOST version as shown above (starting host-), as well as a VM and a WEB version. These other versions are just the same name as the HOST version, but with the word "host" substituted for "vm" or "web". Do note that your IP number can change each time you reave and join the queue, so if you get half-way through configuring and take a break, you need to recalculate the name of your VM and edit the config files to suit the change.

Using any of those techniques identified above, what is the HOST version of your VM currently?

You need to create a virtual host for your virtual machine. In this case you are using the HOST version of your VM. These should go into a new file somewhere in /etc/httpd/conf.d. For the purposes of this tutorial, create and use the file "/etc/httpd/conf.d/zvirtual.conf".

Using <VirtualHost> create a VirtualHost in the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/zvirtual.conf. Below is an example of a VirtualHost definition which may help you remember what is needed.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin me@null.com
    DocumentRoot /home/gordon/public_html/grussell.org
    ServerName sql.grussell.org
    ErrorLog logs/tutorial-error_log
    CustomLog logs/tutorial-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

The name of your virtual host has to be worked out by yourself from your current hostname, which you should have done in the previous question. The document root was created in a previous question too, i.e.

  /var/www/html/myhost/
  

IMPORTANT: Do not just copy the virtualhost example, as your machine number is likely to be entirely different. You need to work out your machine name for yourself as well as the documentroot. Note too that your hostname can change each time you reboot, so double check each time you reboot! The other fields are not important in this question.

It is easy to make a syntax error in the config file. If you have problems you can check for syntax errors using the command:

httpd -t

Once again you can verify this works manually by pointing your browser to host-?-?.linuxzoo.net/hello.html or the vm equivalent (remembering to put the right things in for the "?" characters). This is important, as in an assessment you may need to verify this yourself.

Create the following directory:

• /var/www/html/web

In the new directory create a file called "hello.html", which is a copy of the hello.html from /var/www/html/myhost/, except in "web/hello.html" replace the word HOST with WEB. Case is important. Make not other changes

Follow the permissions and ownership model as before, so alice owns the directory and file, and the directory has full access to alice, and execute only for other, and the file is owned by alice with read and write and readable by other. No group permissions, but make sure group ownership is as expected for files and directories owned by alice.

Create a second virtual host after the first one you created in "/etc/httpd/conf.d/zvirtual.conf". This is similar to the first one, except uses the WEB version of your VM's name, and has a document root of the web directory you created in the previous question. IN ADDITION, make this second virtual host entry have an alias so it will also respond to the VM vesion of your VM's name. So the WEB version of the name starts "web-" and the VM version of the name starts "vm-".

For example, if your HOST name is:

host-3-2.linuxzoo.net

then your WEB and VM names are:

web-3-2.linuxzoo.net
vm-3-2.linuxzoo.net

Each VirtualHost area needs its own ServerName and DocumentRoot. As before the other fields are not important in this question.

Once again you can verify this works manually by pointing your browser to web-?-?.linuxzoo.net/hello.html or the vm equivalent (remembering to put the right things in for the "?" characters). This is important, as in an assessment you may need to verify this yourself. Also check the vm- version with hello.html. If you forget the "hello.html" part you will likely get an error, as there is no index.html default file in this exercise.

Add to the end of the VirtualHost tag area for web-?-? a rewrite rule, such that any use of the alias vm-?-?.linuxzoo.net gets an external redirection to rewrite it to host-?-?.linuxzoo.net/hello.html.

Add a new set of rewrite rules BEFORE the previous rules, so that vm-?-?.linuxzoo.net/data.html gets rewritten using an external redirect to host-?-?.linuxzoo.net/data.html. Otherwise it just does the rules created in the previous quesiton. Thus:

http://vm-?-?.linuxzoo.net/hello.html   -> rewritten to -->  http://host-?-?.linuxzoo.net/data.html 
http://vm-?-?.linuxzoo.net/[anything]   -> Goes to the previous rules and thus rewritten to http://host-?-?.linuxzoo.net/hello.html