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Posted to docs@httpd.apache.org by Rich Bowen <rb...@rcbowen.com> on 2001/11/29 03:23:59 UTC
Virtual hosts and bind
I have been enduring an extended tirade from a disgruntled user
regarding the vhosts documentation. I suppose I could share most of his
notes with the mailing list, but I'm not sure how much good this would
do. His primary points are as follows:
1) There's no step-by-step guide for setting up a virtual host. (I don't
think that I agree with this, but I admit that I have a somewhat
different perspective, having done this a few times.)
2) The documentation does not tell you what you need to do with DNS in
order to get virtual hosts working. (I would argue here that we not only
should not be documenting other products, like bind, but we simply
can't. It's not possible to provide howtos for all of the possible DNS
servers that they might be running, even if we wanted to.)
3) (This one is a little strange, and I'm not sure I completely
understand what he's saying) The documentation is too much focused on
what is possible (ie, as in all the possible configuration directives
for a given module, for example) and not enough on what real server
admins are likely to want to do in an average day. He seems to think
that the per-module documentation, and the lists of directives, are not
useful. (Assuming I'm understanding the point that he is making, I
disagree very heartily, remembering the days when I was new to Apache,
and trying to get it to do things.)
So, while I completely disagree with the points that he is making, I
wonder how many other folks feel this way. Are people really having this
much trouble finding the information that they want in the docs? He
talked at length about the way that the open source world, and in
particular linux (with which he drew some sort of analogy to Apache)
seem to think that users derive "a sort of sexual pleasure from solving
riddles", meaning, I took it, that the documentation leaves you to
figure out most things on your own. He also, as far as I can tell, was
of the opinion that ApacheToday, ApacheWeek, and a variety of different
books, in particular Apache: The Definitive Guide, comprised part of the
documentation, and he somehow expected me to be able to do something
about them. And he made repeated comments about how when he first tried
to set up Apache, in 1997, the documentation was no help to him at all.
Anyways, I thought that I would share these thoughts. I'm not entirely
sure why, since I think that he's way off-base, and, personally, I think
that the documentation has made significant improvements over the last
year or two. But, as Bill mentioned earlier, if people have the
perception that something is wrong, then something probably needs to get
addressed. I'm just not sure what that is. Thoughts, anyone?
--
Rich Bowen - rbowen@rcbowen.com
ReefKnot - http://www.reefknot.org
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Re: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@covalent.net>.
From: "Rich Bowen" <rb...@rcbowen.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 8:23 PM
> I have been enduring an extended tirade from a disgruntled user
> regarding the vhosts documentation.
:( Rich, you really don't have to put up with such users... feel free to
invoke the "I'm just one unpaid voulenteer..." and close with the suggestion
that they look to a commercially supported product [which this fellow seems
to expect] or one of the many good reference works out there [certainly,
your own :-]
> So, while I completely disagree with the points that he is making, I
> wonder how many other folks feel this way. Are people really having this
> much trouble finding the information that they want in the docs?
Sure, we could have a _tome_ the size of the PHP docs, if we had that many
people willing to write that level of detail, and the management tools to
support it. Notice that PHP and mod_ssl both have easier-to-follow docs
formats, but they back those with the composition tools for larger docs.
OTOH, we need to have sufficient voulenteers to not only author, but maintain
on an ongoing basis. This is obviously an area where the commercial authors
(you included :) and vendors can and should write the 'handholding' walkthroughs,
backed by the technical support, that this sort of user expects.
> He talked at length about the way that the open source world, and in
> particular linux (with which he drew some sort of analogy to Apache)
> seem to think that users derive "a sort of sexual pleasure from solving
> riddles", meaning, I took it, that the documentation leaves you to
> figure out most things on your own.
Sure, such things are works-in-progress, there is rarely the 'code complete'
metric, and everything, including documentation, is voulenteer [even if your
employeer has 'voulenteered' you to such a project.] And yes, such docs tend
to cover the 'what can you do', while tutorials (many, spread across many good
resources) will tell you 'what you aught to do' and 'how to, step by step'.
> He also, as far as I can tell, was
> of the opinion that ApacheToday, ApacheWeek, and a variety of different
> books, in particular Apache: The Definitive Guide, comprised part of the
> documentation, and he somehow expected me to be able to do something
> about them. And he made repeated comments about how when he first tried
> to set up Apache, in 1997, the documentation was no help to him at all.
And he's still using it. I'm torn between the desire to laugh and strangle
the guy... he obviously isn't hurting, having had four years to switch
products if it were 'all that bad'. In any case, it sounds like this fellow
aught to get a life, or contribute something (sounds like the gimme-gimme
type of me, me, me individual.)
> Anyways, I thought that I would share these thoughts. I'm not entirely
> sure why, since I think that he's way off-base, and, personally, I think
> that the documentation has made significant improvements over the last
> year or two. But, as Bill mentioned earlier, if people have the
> perception that something is wrong, then something probably needs to get
> addressed. I'm just not sure what that is. Thoughts, anyone?
Pretty simple. That 'snake oil' cert, our index.html and other non-intuitive
aspect of the server should be kept trivial to understand and harmless to the
unexpecting client. Sort of like we've killed BindAddress+Port, and simply
have the Listen+ServerName directives now. Two directives to understand,
rather than four. We've loaded lots of disclaimers in the "It Worked" page
backed by a preFAQ. That's all progress.
But as far as babysitting, if he wants a personal babysitter, he needs to
pay for one. That could be a $50 (unsupported but thorough) volume from Amazon,
or a $1000 product backed by documentation _plus_ support. If he wants to go
it alone, he's approaching this just as we all did, from the first download of
the software.
I sure have no tears for this person.
Bill
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Re: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@covalent.net>.
From: "Andy Doran - Fasthosts Internet Ltd." <an...@fasthosts.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 3:20 AM
> > Here's a pretty standard vhost block -- I use a bunch just
> > like this with different names and paths. What else should be
> > included in a good general example?
> >
> > <VirtualHost 64.81.19.108>
> > DocumentRoot /home/web/mosxsw/htdocs/
> > ServerName www.mosxsw.com
> > ServerAlias mosxsw.com www.macosxsw.com macosxsw.com
> > port.mosxsw.com
> > ErrorLog logs/error_log
> > CustomLog logs/mosxsw.com-access_log combined
> > </VirtualHost>
>
>
> I would suggest that ServerAdmin should be in there too, unless you set it
> up globally.
For an example block? I'd agree ServerAdmin should be there. Is there any
difference between;
ServerAlias mosxsw.com www.macosxsw.com macosxsw.com port.mosxsw.com
and
ServerAlias mosxsw.com
ServerAlias www.macosxsw.com
ServerAlias macosxsw.com
ServerAlias port.mosxsw.com
??? If not, the latter is certainly more legible.
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RE: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by "Andy Doran - Fasthosts Internet Ltd." <an...@fasthosts.co.uk>.
> Here's a pretty standard vhost block -- I use a bunch just
> like this with different names and paths. What else should be
> included in a good general example?
>
> <VirtualHost 64.81.19.108>
> DocumentRoot /home/web/mosxsw/htdocs/
> ServerName www.mosxsw.com
> ServerAlias mosxsw.com www.macosxsw.com macosxsw.com
> port.mosxsw.com
> ErrorLog logs/error_log
> CustomLog logs/mosxsw.com-access_log combined
> </VirtualHost>
I would suggest that ServerAdmin should be in there too, unless you set it
up globally.
Andy.
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Re: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by Chris Pepper <pe...@mail.reppep.com>.
At 9:23 PM -0500 2001/11/28, Rich Bowen wrote:
>I have been enduring an extended tirade from a disgruntled user
>regarding the vhosts documentation. I suppose I could share most of his
>notes with the mailing list, but I'm not sure how much good this would
>do. His primary points are as follows:
>
>1) There's no step-by-step guide for setting up a virtual host. (I don't
>think that I agree with this, but I admit that I have a somewhat
>different perspective, having done this a few times.)
Screwy users aside, I think
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/vhosts/name-based.html> is pretty good,
and could be enhanced by a good general sample, showing the most
likely directives for use in a vhost block, and warnings:
You must update your DNS so this hostname maps to this IP.
Beware DNS CNAMEs for mailhosts -- It's logical to use CNAMEs
with vhosts, but if you introduce sendmail, it will rewrite, and this
is probably not what you want; with sendmail, use multiple A records.
Define a vhost for the default case; define the main
(non-vhost) area of httpd.conf to be extra-conservative, and override
as necessary for specific vhosts.
If you specify vhost access or error logging, but not both,
the other logging doesn't happen -- Is this true? I think I saw it
mentioned here, but never complained.
NameVirtualHost is requires before VirtualHost direct
Here's a pretty standard vhost block -- I use a bunch just
like this with different names and paths. What else should be
included in a good general example?
<VirtualHost 64.81.19.108>
DocumentRoot /home/web/mosxsw/htdocs/
ServerName www.mosxsw.com
ServerAlias mosxsw.com www.macosxsw.com macosxsw.com port.mosxsw.com
ErrorLog logs/error_log
CustomLog logs/mosxsw.com-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>
Thanks,
Chris Pepper
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>
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Re: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by Daniel Lopez <da...@rawbyte.com>.
I think he is just confused and or frustrated with the fact that Apache can
be configured in so many ways. This is great for people that are already
familiar with the server and need that extra power/ configuration options.
Many of the users, however just want it "to work". They dont want to read
that you can do something three different ways or about some obscure cases.
They just want a step by step guide on what they need to do.
Just take a look at the logging directives for example:
LogFormat allows you to have a logging format and a nickname or
just take a nickname or just take a logging format.
If you have the logging format and hte nickname, then it does not have any
secondary effects. If you have only the nicknmae or the format then it will
set the format for the next TransferLog directive. TransferLog is just a
special case of CustomLog.
Then in turn CustomLog can accept either a format string or a nickname.
This allows you much more flexibility but it obscures how to just log stuff
to a file, which is what most people want. It will be much more easier if:
LogFormat only takes two arguments, format and nickname
CustomLog only takes a nickname argument, previously defined on a LogFormat
TransferLog is removed, since is a subset of CustomLog.
I have the feeling that what most users will ever need from Apache is 25% of
all the available directives. All the other 75% is nice and it may be
required in some situations, but I doubt many people use it at all.
On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 09:23:59PM -0500, Rich Bowen wrote:
> I have been enduring an extended tirade from a disgruntled user
> regarding the vhosts documentation. I suppose I could share most of his
> notes with the mailing list, but I'm not sure how much good this would
> do. His primary points are as follows:
>
> 1) There's no step-by-step guide for setting up a virtual host. (I don't
> think that I agree with this, but I admit that I have a somewhat
> different perspective, having done this a few times.)
>
> 2) The documentation does not tell you what you need to do with DNS in
> order to get virtual hosts working. (I would argue here that we not only
> should not be documenting other products, like bind, but we simply
> can't. It's not possible to provide howtos for all of the possible DNS
> servers that they might be running, even if we wanted to.)
>
> 3) (This one is a little strange, and I'm not sure I completely
> understand what he's saying) The documentation is too much focused on
> what is possible (ie, as in all the possible configuration directives
> for a given module, for example) and not enough on what real server
> admins are likely to want to do in an average day. He seems to think
> that the per-module documentation, and the lists of directives, are not
> useful. (Assuming I'm understanding the point that he is making, I
> disagree very heartily, remembering the days when I was new to Apache,
> and trying to get it to do things.)
>
> So, while I completely disagree with the points that he is making, I
> wonder how many other folks feel this way. Are people really having this
> much trouble finding the information that they want in the docs? He
> talked at length about the way that the open source world, and in
> particular linux (with which he drew some sort of analogy to Apache)
> seem to think that users derive "a sort of sexual pleasure from solving
> riddles", meaning, I took it, that the documentation leaves you to
> figure out most things on your own. He also, as far as I can tell, was
> of the opinion that ApacheToday, ApacheWeek, and a variety of different
> books, in particular Apache: The Definitive Guide, comprised part of the
> documentation, and he somehow expected me to be able to do something
> about them. And he made repeated comments about how when he first tried
> to set up Apache, in 1997, the documentation was no help to him at all.
>
> Anyways, I thought that I would share these thoughts. I'm not entirely
> sure why, since I think that he's way off-base, and, personally, I think
> that the documentation has made significant improvements over the last
> year or two. But, as Bill mentioned earlier, if people have the
> perception that something is wrong, then something probably needs to get
> addressed. I'm just not sure what that is. Thoughts, anyone?
>
> --
> Rich Bowen - rbowen@rcbowen.com
> ReefKnot - http://www.reefknot.org
>
>
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Re: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by Rich Bowen <rb...@rcbowen.com>.
On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Andrew Olden wrote:
> > As a bit of an outsider to the Apache Docs project, my 2 euros are:
> > What kind of docs are we/you trying to write? Docs for penguin heads so
> that
> > they can squeeze out a few more features from Apache, or docs for numpties
> > who just want to get a webserver up and running?
> >
> > To write a single document to appeal to both is essentially impossible;
> so,
> > do you write two separate documents? Sounds like the work load is
> doubling
> > with this option. How about a few 'scenarios' which will cater for the
> bulk
> > of people who just want to do the basics.
> > eg. "I'm running an intranet and want to share docs internally"
> > "I want to set up a simple public webserver with no script support"
> > "I want an all singing and all dancing, cgi-enabled, Virtual Hosting
> > environment with .htaccess and frontpage support".
> >
> > Too much hand-holding? I'll leave that up to you to decide. Oh yes,
> please
> > don't shoot me down (unless you can do it in a funny way).
After thinking about this quite a bit, I think that these comments are
right on target. We are indeed writing two rather different sorts of
documentation, and I think that having this clearly in mind, and doing
it intentionally, would be a good thing.
The FAQ goes part way to doing this - taking specific scenarios, and
addressing how one would deal with particular situations - and it does a
really good job of it in most cases. And the various tutorials seem to
do this pretty well, although there are very few of them at this time.
We're not really writing two separate documents, as they are, and should
be, deeply interlinked. But if we are aware as we work on these that we
are talking to two completely different audiences, I think that it will
result in better docs.
I still maintain that we cannot, and should not try to, document every
other product that someone will need to work with in order to run
Apache. (For example, bind, sendmail, perl, and so on.) Other folks do
that, with varying degrees of success. And it's a bottomless pit once
you start going down it. Are they running bind? What if they are running
Windows DNS? How about djbdns? And who knows what else? And all that
just to tell them how to set up a virtual host? But we can point folks
to the right resources to solve those sorts of problems.
--
Rich Bowen - rbowen@rcbowen.com
Author - Apache Server Unleashed - http://www.apacheunleashed.com/
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Re: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by Andrew Olden <ak...@hotmail.com>.
I agree that this is a good idea, it could also be modelled along the lines
of a document for users migrating from IIS to apache/different terminology
etc.
I wouldn't classify it as hand-holding but you would have to be careful not
to go to far with being helpfull.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Doran - Fasthosts Internet Ltd." <an...@fasthosts.co.uk>
To: <do...@httpd.apache.org>
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 10:57 AM
Subject: RE: Virtual hosts and bind
> Hi all,
>
> As a bit of an outsider to the Apache Docs project, my 2 euros are:
> What kind of docs are we/you trying to write? Docs for penguin heads so
that
> they can squeeze out a few more features from Apache, or docs for numpties
> who just want to get a webserver up and running?
>
> To write a single document to appeal to both is essentially impossible;
so,
> do you write two separate documents? Sounds like the work load is
doubling
> with this option. How about a few 'scenarios' which will cater for the
bulk
> of people who just want to do the basics.
> eg. "I'm running an intranet and want to share docs internally"
> "I want to set up a simple public webserver with no script support"
> "I want an all singing and all dancing, cgi-enabled, Virtual Hosting
> environment with .htaccess and frontpage support".
>
> Too much hand-holding? I'll leave that up to you to decide. Oh yes,
please
> don't shoot me down (unless you can do it in a funny way).
>
> Andy
>
> > So I'm just saying thanks for forwarding this, and everyone
> > should feel free
> > to forward such comments in the future --- even if we then
> > immediately shoot
> > them down.
> >
> > Joshua.
>
>
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RE: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by "Andy Doran - Fasthosts Internet Ltd." <an...@fasthosts.co.uk>.
Hi all,
As a bit of an outsider to the Apache Docs project, my 2 euros are:
What kind of docs are we/you trying to write? Docs for penguin heads so that
they can squeeze out a few more features from Apache, or docs for numpties
who just want to get a webserver up and running?
To write a single document to appeal to both is essentially impossible; so,
do you write two separate documents? Sounds like the work load is doubling
with this option. How about a few 'scenarios' which will cater for the bulk
of people who just want to do the basics.
eg. "I'm running an intranet and want to share docs internally"
"I want to set up a simple public webserver with no script support"
"I want an all singing and all dancing, cgi-enabled, Virtual Hosting
environment with .htaccess and frontpage support".
Too much hand-holding? I'll leave that up to you to decide. Oh yes, please
don't shoot me down (unless you can do it in a funny way).
Andy
> So I'm just saying thanks for forwarding this, and everyone
> should feel free
> to forward such comments in the future --- even if we then
> immediately shoot
> them down.
>
> Joshua.
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RE: Virtual hosts and bind
Posted by Joshua Slive <jo...@slive.ca>.
> From: Rich Bowen [mailto:rbowen@rcbowen.com]
>
> I have been enduring an extended tirade from a disgruntled user
> regarding the vhosts documentation. I suppose I could share most of his
> notes with the mailing list, but I'm not sure how much good this would
> do. His primary points are as follows:
I think we all agree that most of his points are off-base. Of course the
documentation is never going to be right for everybody, and even if there
was one set of "perfect" documentation, we don't have the resources to
create it.
But I do appreciate you forwarding these comments. It sometimes feels like
we work in a vacuum. I try to pay attention to the newsgroups and mailing
lists to see what is confusing people, but I suspect that I get a very
distorted view of the population.
So I'm just saying thanks for forwarding this, and everyone should feel free
to forward such comments in the future --- even if we then immediately shoot
them down.
Joshua.
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