GizmoLA.com

*Part 1 of this series is here*

Customizing your LAMP server

Unix people are probably familiar with the father of the DNS system -- the /etc/hosts file. The hosts file has a simple format:

ipaddress hostname

In the days prior to DNS, people would update a master hosts file and copy it around to all the servers in the enterprise. Surprisingly Windows versions also support this file, as a way of overriding DNS, so we can use this to our advantage, by adding an entry for our development server. In this example, I'm going to use dev.gizmola.com, which is not a real server.

One important reason to do this is that Apache and other web servers, use a feature of HTTP 1.1 that specifies a header field named "Host:". This mechanism facilitates the service of multiple domains from a single apache server, through the configuration of apache virtual host (or vhost) entires. The server uses the Host name in the HTTP header to determine how to route requests, so without host name resolution. you have to use non-standard ports and other mechanisms that are more trouble than they're worth. a

Continue reading "Centos Virtual LAMP server -- Part II" »