OK
To recap a bit: Virtual Hosts has problems in Apache. Configuring it in
the normal ways results in errors and sites not working. This suggests
problems in areas not related to Vhosts per se, but a different kind of
conflict.
The vhost site I am using for testing showed up for some people, such as
at Carleton U., but outside of that, nobody else could see it. Worse
yet, dig and ns lookup did not return anything. This suggests a DNS
problem to me, and further suggests that Carleton is on the same er..
"dns area"(?) zone (?) as my ISP and secondary DNS provider, Teksavvy.
(IE using the same name servers as I - I know NCF does for sure).
Poking around some more this is what I have been able to determine as
what may be happening.
My main site is using my registrars domain forwarding service to provide
dns to my main site IP for a basic www and mail host. No bind required.
The registrar now says that their forwarding service is broken - old
sites work, new sites not - and I need to provide real name servers for
my new domains. OK.
Because I want to use my static-ip as my primary DNS server, but the
main site (which is my machine host name) is being handled my their
basic forwarders. Does it cause BIND/Apache to not handle virtual sites
very well? The reason I ask is while dig, and whois show my main domain
working right with the forwarding service, the same can not be said for
the virtual domains. They know of the site, but they seem to not be able
to see my name server.
Because I fear loosing my main site too (which is essential as I work
from home) I am loath to remove the forwarding and assign my primary
domain to my own DNS server as nothing seems to see the server, and I do
not know why. Firewalls would not seem to be an issue as I can transfer
domains and accept queries from my remote secondary. And as I mentioned,
some people outside my local network seem to be able to access the site
(though breadcrumb code broke).
I can only assume I mis-configured bind in some essential way.
I suspect I may have to start from scratch and go over this step by
step, as I really need to get these other sites up as well. This is not
an auspicious start my new business I must say.
So what do I do to start this process from scratch? What are the minimum
record types needed in BIND to get my primary domain to act as an
authoritative DNS host, and get my sites to all play nice with each other?
I will post excerpts from any of the configs as needed. Maybe somebody
can spot where I am going wrong.
So to confirm one thing: I do _not_ use the local subnet IPs in bind in
any manner for these sites. I use the static IP. Even though the machine
is a different IP, my router will forward to it as if it was?
Do I take the risk and "un-forward" the service and run my primary
domain from my own primary DNS (this is the old way I had it configured
years ago, but I it was way easier to use their service as my server was
only for light duty use when I first started this up again).
Thanks
Scy