Apache2 - dynamic virtual hosts

[marcosscriven]

Hi

I want to be able to add/update/remove virtual hosts dynamically, without restarting Apache 2 every time. My main reason being, I don't want any down time.

I found this tutorial, which is reasonably clear: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/vhosts/mass.html

What isn't clear to me is the following:

1) If I have virtual hosts www.example1.com and www.example2.com, what happens if I want to do some maintenance work on www.example2.com, such that they just get a page saying 'Maintenance underway blah blah blah', and can't request any other pages?

2) How can I ensure that if the virtual host doesn't exist or has a problem, the default one isn't used

3) How can I, dynamically, choose whether or not a site should be plain text over port 80, or secured over 445?

Just to clarify, what I would like to be able to do is setup any virtual host I wanted, without bouncing the Apache2 process, just by setting up the relevant DNS records, and creating a directory in /var/www/ of the same name, while also being able to determine it's status as SSL or not, and whether it is 'up' or 'down'

I have found a few MODs in Google searches that seem to use MySQL setups, but they seem to be invariably home brew stuff that is not very up to date.

Thanks

Marcos

[steviewdr]

[quote]3) How can I, dynamically, choose whether or not a site should be plain text over port 80, or secured over 445?[/quote]

In a .htaccess file, put:
[code]SSLRequireSSL
ErrorDocument 403 https://www.securewebsite.com/
[/code]

Its only a quick hack.

[quote]1) If I have virtual hosts www.example1.com and www.example2.com, what happens if I want to do some maintenance work on www.example2.com, such that they just get a page saying 'Maintenance underway blah blah blah', and can't request any other pages?[/quote]
There are custom error codes you can put in a .htaccess file in the root web folder of www.example2.com

[quote]
2) How can I ensure that if the virtual host doesn't exist or has a problem, the default one isn't used[/quote]
I dont get you there. Do you just want to throw a 404 - Page Not Found? if a virtual host aint exist.
Im sure there is a default page you can use for apache to show if the server is accessed by default, e.g. by IP address or a unconfigured sub-domain name.

-steve

[the_oliver]

If you comment out the default page at the top of the virtual hosts part of the config (part 3) then this will not be a problem, so long as your using name based hosting.  If your using ip based hosting then it may do a revers lookup on service ip, and show you that page, but it depend how your distributing your ips.

As to the ssl or normal, i do it by setting up the following.  each site has a folder: www.example.com.  With in this they also have to have three other folders docs (for standard on port 80) https (for ssl).  Thus when the user starts by typing https:// they hit the https folder other wise the docs folder.  My third folder is there cgi-bin.

Im assuming your using mod_vhost_alias and something like [i]VirtualDocumentRoot /var/www/html/%0/docs[/i] to achive this?  How many sites are you hosting?  There are a number of other way to do this that, if your not hosting a huge number of sites may be simpler for what you want!