Question

How do I get virtual hosts working?

Posted on September 20, 2024
Apache Ubuntu
Asked by Ade

So I’m trying to get a second website working on my droplet. I sorted out the DNS settings then followed this tutorial for setting up a virtual host (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-18-04) and others but nothing seems to have changed. my initial website works fine but my new domain just shows a generic “server not found” error.

In my /etc/apache2/sites-available folder I have made two new config files website1.net.conf and website2.com.conf, but I left the original config files 000-default.conf and 000-default-le-ssl.conf in there too just in case.

website1.net.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
	
	ServerName website1.net
          ServerAlias www.website1.net
	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html
	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
	
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =website1.net [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =www.website1.net
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>

website2.com.conf (new website)

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerName website2.com
        	ServerAlias www.website2.com
	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	DocumentRoot /var/www/website2
	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

I also noticed that my apache error logs have a tun of errors on the new domain that look like…

[Fri Sep 20 13:47:03.989320 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/item.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.001638 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/cache-compat.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.016350 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/abouts.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.031104 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/gel4y.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.102058 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/wp-cron.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.126998 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/alfanew.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.141013 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/log.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.151789 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/tinyfilemanager.php' not found or unable to stat
[Fri Sep 20 13:47:04.162970 2024] [php:error] [pid 2458530] [client xx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxx] script '/var/www/website2/rbzccnnp.php' not found or unable to stat

and I dont understand what it means or why the server thinks those files on my new site exist when I’ve never seen those files before.

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• September 20, 2024

Accepted Answer

Hey!

As far as I can see from the log output, the not found or unable to stat message indicates that the Apache web service is unable to read the files in the /var/www/website2 directory. Basically, it seems like your Apache logs are complaining about missing files in /var/www/website2. Make sure that the directory exists and the permissions are set correctly:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/website2
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/website2
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/website2

After adding the two virtual hosts did you enable them with:

sudo a2ensite website1.net.conf
sudo a2ensite website2.com.conf

Also you might need to do a quick restart after that:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Also in some cases, browsers like Chrome will automatically forward your traffic to HTTPS, so if only one of the sites has an SSL certificate you might not see the incorrect content. So make sure to install SSL certificates for the two domain names just in case: