Apache configuration question

[leaded]

Hey guys. I have FC5 installed on a computer with the DNS name... we'll call it green.domain.com. I'm running Apache 2 and Tomcat. I set an Alias to go to the Tomcat directory...

Alias /sxdm/ "/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/sxdm/"

If you go to http://green.domain.com/sxdm/ it shows the directory listing using Tomcat's webserver. That's okay for me. The application starts by going to http://green.domain.com/sxdm/servlet/portal.

On the developer network DNS server, they added an entry for... orange.domain.com to the same IP address as green.domain.com. If I go to http://orange.domain.com/sxdm/servlet/portal, it does the same thing as if I go to green. The Apache httpd.conf file has no mention of orange anywhere.

I was asked today to make it so if a user goes to http://orange.domain.com it goes to http://orange.domain.com/sxdm/servlet/portal. I thought about using VirtualHosts and making the document root /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/sxdm/servlet/portal but I think they want to see the URL http://orange.domain.com/sxdm/servlet/portal

My first response was to make an index.html file in the document root and use a meta refresh tag. And it works. But I have two problems with this: 1, it's client-side; and 2, if I go to http://green.domain.com it will do the same redirect.

How to I make it so, on the server-side, a request for http://orange.domain.com redirects to http://orange.domain.com/sxdm/servlet/portal but green.domain.com is unaffected? Keep in mind I don't want to change the documentroot.

Thanks!

[brunson]

If I had to take a first guess, the redirection from http://whateverdomain/sxdm/ to http://green.domain.com/sxdm/servlet/portal is being done by the servlet, apache won't redirect that way. Tell the servlet developers to use relative URLs.

If you want different behavior for orange and green, you'll have to use virtual hosts or else write a server side script that looks at the URL that was requested and only serve up the redirect for orange.

My standard answer to people that pay too much attention to the URL in the location bar is "Why do you care?" If it's doing the right thing, get over it.

The easiest thing to do will be to create two virtual hosts for green and orange and give them different document roots. I've had to do it so many times that I don't even bother not doing it anymore, I create a virtual host even if there's only one.

[bob]

(moved to Servers)