How to add another application to apache?

Question

I was following the Zabbix installation tutorial for Ubuntu and it requested that I added a file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default containing

Alias /zabbix /home/zabbix/public_html/
<Directory /home/zabbix/public_html>
  AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes
  Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
  <Limit GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </Limit>
  <LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND>
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
  </LimitExcept>
</Directory>

But I already have /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/railsapp

NameVirtualHost *:80
NameVirtualHost *:443

<VirtualHost *:80>
    UseCanonicalName Off
    Include /etc/apache2/conf/railsapp.conf
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/cert.pem
    Include /etc/apache2/conf/railsapp.conf
    RequestHeader set X_FORWARDED_PROTO 'https'
</VirtualHost>

and /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mercurial

NameVirtualHost *:8080

<VirtualHost *:8080>
    UseCanonicalName Off
    ServerAdmin  webmaster@localhost
    AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
    ScriptAliasMatch ^(.*) /usr/lib/cgi-bin/hgwebdir.cgi/$1
</VirtualHost>

I think that it is because of the already existing virtual hosts that my I can't access the zabbix page. How to circumvent this?

Answer 1

You have a couple of options; 1: putting zabbix on a different port; 2: making it accessible under the normal vhost.

For #1 update 000-default to:

DocumentRoot /home/zabbix/public_html

AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec Order allow,deny Allow from all Order deny,allow Deny from all

For #2

Move 000-default to /etc/apache2/conf/zabbix.conf and add :

Include /etc/apache2/conf/zabbix.conf

above the similar Include statement in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/railsapp

Answer 2

You will need to tell Apache to listen on an extra port and then set your Rails application's configuration to use a different NameVirtualHost port.

Judging by the configuration information you have provided there will be three Listen parameters in your Apache configuration:

Listen *:80
Listen *:443
Listen *:8080

These maybe spread across a few configuration files depending on how Apache is configured. You want to add a fourth port to listen to for your Rails app, for example 8081:

Listen *:80
Listen *:443
Listen *:8080
Listen *:8081

Once this extra Listen directive is in place edit the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/railsapp file and change the first NameVirtualHost directive to 8081, for example:

NameVirtualHost *:8081
NameVirtualHost *:443
....

Restart Apache and you'll find zabbix on 80, the Rails app on 8081/443 and Mercurial on 8080.

However....

If you can set DNS records within your internal network (I am guessing this is for internal use) you can setup virtual hosts that are differentiated by domain name rather than port. Apache would then only need to listen to the default ports 80 and 443 and you would differentiate between applications using the domain url, for example:

zabbix.yourdomain.com
railsapp.yourdomain.com
mercurial.yourdomain.com

The benefit of this is that you can continue adding different virtual hosts without having to use a new port each time. There are plenty of documents on the web explaining how to set this up (hint: see the Ubuntu documentation).

The only caveat to this approach is that only one virtual host can process HTTPS requests on a specific port (443) due to the way the protocol works. However, if you only need HTTPS access to one of the virtual hosts this isn't a problem, just don't tell the other hosts to use HTTPS (443) and you'll be fine.