Apache Default/Catch-All Virtual Host?

Solution 1:

When using name-based virtual hosts, the first virtual host configuration loaded will be the default (Source: Apache Wiki). For example, with the configuration below, otherwise unmatched domains will match with domain-one.com:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName domain-one.com
  # Other options and directives ..
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName domain-two.com
  # Other options and directives ..
</VirtualHost>

Many servers do not have a monolithic configuration file, but have several host-specific configuration files organized as follows:

/etc/apache2
|-- sites_available  (actual configuration files)
`-- sites_enabled    (symlinks to files in sites_available)

In this case, to make a particular virtual host configuration load first, rename the symlink to something which will be first when sorted, such as 00-default.

Some of the other answers are not quite correct. According to the Apache Wiki, not setting a ServerName in a virtual host is incorrect. If the host without a ServerName is not loaded first, Apache may never even use it, since the first host loaded would be the default.

Furthermore, while ServerAlias * will indeed match anything, it may also override other virtual hosts defined later. Maybe this approach would work if it's always the last virtual host to be defined (as in the configuration given in the question), but this means adding a new directive and changing the sort order instead of just changing the order as above.

Solution 2:

Yes, that should work, except ServerAlias should be "*", with ServerName set to an actual hostname. You might need to make sure that VirtualHost is the very last loaded...

Solution 3:

Don't specify a servername, and that becomes your default vhost.. 

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Also be sure that you haven't specified a DocumentRoot in the main httpd.conf file, as that will take precedence over the vhosts.

Solution 4:

Order is important - move your vhost definition for everything else to the head of the list.

Solution 5:

Use the _default_ virtual host and place it first in httpd-vhosts.conf as specified in http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/examples.html

"Catching every request to any unspecified IP address and port, i.e., an address/port combination that is not used for any other virtual host [...] A default vhost never serves a request that was sent to an address/port that is used for name-based vhosts. If the request contained an unknown or no Host: header it is always served from the primary name-based vhost (the vhost for that address/port appearing first in the configuration file)."

Snippet from a live but obfuscated httpd-vhosts.conf which happens to lock all vhosts to port 80:

# Listen for virtual host requests on all IP addresses.
# This directive cannot be removed:
NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost _default_:80>
# This vhost catches client requests with host headers which have
# not been matched by ServerName or ServerAlias directives in other vhosts.
#
# We redirect all such requests to a particular named vhost:
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}    ^(.*)$
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$  http://my.site.of.choice [R=permanent,L]
</VirtualHost>

# Name based vhosts here:
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    ServerName  my.other.site
    ServerAlias my.other.site2 my.other.site3
</VirtualHost>

# more vhosts etc...

An in-depth explanation of the vhost matching process can be found here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/details.html

Tags:

Virtualhost

Apache 2.2

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