Hosting Multiple Websites on RPi 4

Question

So I've already set everything as for port forwarding in my router settings, I've set a static IP address for the RRi 4, and have already managed to get 1 page visible through my Pi web server.

The problem began when I went to set up the "Virtual Host" files in Apache2 to point to each domain that I plan on hosting on the RPi 4. Now no page shows, and the message I keep seeing says the following:

"404 Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server. Apache/2.4.38 (Raspbian) Server at MY-PUBLIC-IP-ADDRESS-HERE Port 80" As shown in the image below (404 message):

I have website1.com inside of "/var/www/website1.com/public_html/index.php" and I have website2.com inside of "/var/www/website2.com/public_html/index.php"

My Apache2 folder inside of directory "/etc/apache2/" looks like this:

And here is how I've set up my Virtual Host file (for website1.com) inside the directory "/etc/apache2/sites-available/Website1.com.conf":

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
ServerName Website1.com
ServerAlias www.Website1.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/Website1/public_html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

AND the other file is a duplicate for website2.com inside of directory "/etc/apache2/sites-available/Website1.com.conf":

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
ServerName Website2.com
ServerAlias www.Website2.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/Website2/public_html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

I haven't set my DNS records for my real website domains yet, but as far as I remember, I should have been able to test on my localhost or check through my public IP address that is forwarding to my RPi 4 IP address to preview these 2 separate domains/websites.

Does it look like I've structured the Apache Virtual Hosts properly? Thanks.

Answer 1

Virtual hosts depend upon a host name in the HTTP/1.1 Host: header, and so probably cannot be made to work without those DNS entries. The browser determines the host name from the URL and sets up the correct Host: header. Apache uses that header to select the correct virtual host. Based on the comments, you got the 404 error because you also disabled the default page. No default, no Host: header, 404.

For testing, you could edit the hosts file of the computer that's running the web browser rather than enabling the DNS, or just turn DNS on and See What Happens™.

On Win10, the hosts file is located here: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts Don't forget to remove those entries when you're done testing.

Also, I don't see in your question that you've enabled the sites. Use a2ensite Website1.com (Assuming that the configuration file is Website1.com.conf) Once the sites are enabled, you must restart Apache with sudo systemctl restart apache2

Also, I believe it's good practice to use all lowercase in those file names. DNS will resolve host names in a case-insensitive manner, and Apache will treat them that way, but I'd worry that something else might break since the file system is not case-insensitive. (Fix the DNS first.)

Answer 2

Okay, so now I figured out with the problem was. I've done EVERYTHING RIGHT, EXCEPT for having the proper permissions on the directories to enable or disable these sites. I have my permissions all messed up. Thanks for your support, Bob. I can totally understand why it would have been too difficult to pinpoint such an issue.