I'm not a complete newbie to networking but at the same time I've never attempted to do what I'm trying to do here.
I have Ubuntu Server (almost fresh install) box connected to a Linksys E3000 router, in my house is 3 Win7 powered machines, 2 OSX computers, 2 Android smartphone devices, and a PS3, 360, etc. Needless to say, I have a LOT of diverse devices in my house that use the internet regularly, so I need to tread carefully here.
This Ubuntu server acts as a local web server with a LAMP stack (works) and a fileserver as well with Samba. This also had BIND9 going for a bit but I NEVER got it working correctly. Heres the scenario im trying to get to here:
On ANY of my devices at ANY time (anything with a web browser in it anyways) I want to be able to visit "mysite.dev" and this url will resolve to a vhost in my apache configuration on my ubuntu server, if the url cannot be resolved, it defaults back to normal internet gateway to try and deliver a page from the internet. To set up a new development site (.dev) I only ever want to have to modify the apache vhost and create my appropriate folders on the system (i would even settle for having to restart my apache each time, i'd be cool with that)
NOTE: I DO NOT WANT NOR NEED ANY OF THIS STUFF TO BE SEEN ON A REMOTE NETWORK. This is PURELY for in-house development.
I am to understand that to do this, I need to configure my router to throw all connections through to my Ubuntu box via an IP, this is where I already become stumped, because I'm not exactly sure which settings im supposed to find and modify.
NOTE: I HATE BIND9. I will use it if i absolutely MUST, but i have a pretty pricey linksys router, it should be able to do whats needed here.
At work just the other day this was accomplished, we avoided using BIND9 entirely and just used the router with a special configuration to resolve urls first to our apache and then to the internet, exactly what I'm trying to do here.
This is all to setup so i dont need to do
//UbuntuMan/mysite (which i have right now)
id rather do
and I will SPLIT THE SEAS in order to accomplish this. All my computers I use to develop websites with at all given points of the day and I have an extremely large set of orders coming in, and I switch computers regularly, so its important that I'm able to work on a server directory and have the pages delivered this way (which is why Samba is on there).
OPTIONAL QUESTION: If this does get setup, how easy would it be to setup where if the Ubuntu server is NOT present (ie: turned off) then it will default to just going to the internet normally?