Linux Admin Zone

This is second part of article to describe how to dynamically manage Apache Virtual host. You can read first article here.

In earlier article I mentioned using a php script to dynamically create/remove virtualhost entry in Apache (httpd) config file and then reload it using cron.

Here I would describe how to manage DNS to dynamically recognize newly created virtualhosts. Again, this might not be the best or efficient way to implement this but this is what worked for me. After creating virtualhosts in Apache, you need to update DNS so that new virtualhosts start working. To update DNS dynamically, your DNS provider should have some way (like API) which enable you to manipulate its records. There are few providers offering this facility. For this experiment, I selected DNSMadeEasy which provides APIs to add/remove/update records on fly using scripts.

There’s situation with my friend where his team wanted to dynamically create/remove virtual hosts or subdomains using php. This can be achieved in several ways. You can use a control panel which obviously use resources or develop your own script to do this. There’s security aspects attached with script because it needs to update file which is read by Apache and to apply settings, you need to reload Apache. Here I am describing how my friend achieved their goal, again I’m saying that this might not be the best way to do this thing and may be comparatively insecure or inefficient but this is what worked for them in Ubuntu host.

In a CentOS 5.5 host, we were required to upgrade php to its latest release which is 5.2.17 when writing this article. Again there are various options to do such upgrade and trying to install with the package manager (yum) is just one (aka easy) of them. You can also trying downloading latest source code and compile yourself to have better control but for ease of use, I’m updating php with yum here.

Again, you won’t find the latest PHP binaries in default repositories available with CentOS and to resolve that we need to have CentAlt repo (or other such repos like epel).

This is a quick post describing some issues that you may face while installing/running vsftpd in Ubuntu host. I will quickly walk through steps, beginning with installation and then configuration for general purpose FTP access.

1. Install and run vsftpd without login shell

Most obvious thing while running a ftp server is to run it under non login shell. This is quite easy in Redhat based distro but here in Ubuntu, you need to do something extra also to enable users accessing ftp running under non login shell.

Install vsftpd server and start it:

$ apt-get install vsftpd
$ /etc/init.d/vsftpd start