Spoofing domains - using one domain to look at another without frame redirect

Question

In Plesk 9.2.2 does anyone know how the following can be achieved?

I've got domain1.co.uk registered in plesk, but the domain has not been set up with any nameservers or A records, so it is unreachable from the web.

However, I need to test it while we get the domain1.co.uk nameservers etc sorted over the next week or so. SO, i've got sparedomain.co.uk registered, with the nameservers and A records pointing to the server, and sure enough it displays the default plesk "theres no website here yet page" .

bingo.

Now, how can I set up sparedomain.co.uk on my plesk server, so it displays all the data held on the plesk account for domain1.co.uk?

Frame forwarding doesnt work - because you get errors saying "domain1.co.uk cannot be found" in your browser - i need a server solution to spoof it all.

Anyone got any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

Assuming the code in place at the domain1.co.uk site is DNS/hostname independent, and as you already have sparedomain.co.uk pointing to the server - the next step is to tell your web server (presumably apache - I know little about Plesk) to accept HTTP requests for the sparedomain.co.uk and where to send them.

With apache this is done using the ServerAlias directive inside the VirtualHost container. Using your example, the contents would be similar to:

<VirtualHost x.x.x.x:xx>
 ServerName domain1.co.uk
 ServerAlias sparedomain.co.uk
 DocumentRoot /path/to/http/document/root/code/etc
</VirtualHost>

This content would be found in the vhost.conf file specific to your domain and Plesk installation. And once done, the vhost reload command and apache restart (also specific to your Plesk installation) would be along the lines of:

/path/to/plesk/bin/websrvmng --reconfigure-vhost --vhost-name=domain1.co.uk
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Not sure if the apache restart is required, but it shouldn't hurt. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Did you try installing sparedomain.co.uk as an alias domain to domain1.co.uk in the administration page of domain1.co.uk for the time being?

A dirtier method could be setting the permissions of the root folder of domain1.co.uk as readable by sparedomain.co.uk's user, and then crafting a symbolic link like sparedomain.co.uk/domain1-demo/, which points to the root dir of domain1.co.uk.