LOCALHOST MULTI SITE INFERNO: Finally did it!

Hi matey

Hopefully I can help a bit (I've done this on windows and linux) - Oh, and I'm writing this from an easy perspective (in case anyone else needs help!)

First off, I'd not use names that resemble proper domain names (you'll see why later!)

It looks to me like you're doing everything right, there's just an important step you've missed out.

You need to locate a file called hosts. It should be here on osx or linux /etc/hosts

Add this to your hosts file: (names used as example, YMMV)

127.0.0.1       rpsite1
127.0.0.1       rpsite2

This does the magic of pointing a http://rpsite1 to localhost (this is why we don't want to use real domain names as you're basically overriding the internet. If you were to use a real domain, then you would never see the internet version, only your localhost version....not good for sanity!)

Now, I'm not sure how apache is setup on osx - I'm using Ubuntu on the desktop and FC6 on a server and they both differ with regards to virtual servers!

Right then (after a bit of searching!), you need to edit the file /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

Find the section titled "### Section 3: Virtual Hosts".

There may be a line that looks like #NameVirtualHost * - this needs changing to NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1

Then underneath this you'll want to add lines like this:

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
	DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/path/to/files
	ServerName rpsite1
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
	DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents/path/to/files
	ServerName rpsite2
</VirtualHost>

The DocumentRoot is where Apache will look for your files, the ServerName is whatever you're using in the hosts file. If you want to add more test sites, then you'll need to remember to update the hosts file and the httpd.conf file

Whenever you make changes to httpd.conf you need to restart Apache, taken from another site "In MacOS X, the easiest way to do this is in the Sharing panel in System Preferences. Turn Web Sharing off, then turn it on again."
(On some linux it would be something like sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart, or in Ubuntu/Debian sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now, if you point your browser to rpsite1 or rpsite2 you should get whatever documents are in the respective directories.

Now, the many-sites-from-one-codebase thing!::
If you set both DocumentRoots of the sites to point to the same directory, you should be able to get drupal to serve different settings. sometimes you may need to put a symbolic link in the DocumentRoot that points back to the DocumentRoot, in which case:

ln -s /path/to/existing/dir /path/to/link

So we could do

ln -s /Library/WebServer/Documents/path/to/files //Library/WebServer/Documents/path/to/files/subsite

In drupal's sites directory, you should have a 'default' directory and you might have an 'all' directory.
Make a new directory called whatever your site is, so you could have rpsite1 or rpsite2 or whatever. Now if you want a sub-site setting up, you'd make a dir called subsite.mainsite or if you wanted to have different settings for a sub-directory eg rpsite1 has one set of settings, but rpsite1/staff has some different settings, then you'd make a directory called rpsite1.staff
(I haven't tried this with drupal5 but I've got it working on drupal47 so it should still be the same, as an example http://www.personalcapabilities.co.uk and http://www.personalcapabilities.co.uk/smartscience are on drupal47, on the same codebase, but the second site uses a different set of modules, and a different theme), anyway back to the show!

Now you need to copy a settings.php into your newly created directories and set the settings.
(Before we start editting any settings, I'd double check that mysql is listening on the port you specify as it should default to 3306, and apache defaults to port 80).
See if you've got a file called /etc/mysql/my.cnf Towards the top of this file is a section title '[client]'. Make sure the port is what you think it is (or it will be 3306). Also make sure under the '[mysqld]' the port is the same - should be 3306

For Apache, have a look in the httpd.conf for a setting called 'Listen'. This will tell you which port apache is setup to listen on - the default is 80.

Back to drupal (just read something else you need to check!)

If apache is running on a port other than 80, you need to rename the dirs we just created in the sites to this format
I'm using the port number you said before, so

8888.rpsite1
or
8888.rpsite2
or
8888.rpsite1.staff
...

Use your settings from before, but if mysql is running on its' normal port, you don't need to tell drupal.

Using the above method, you could have a multi-site from one codebase setup, it's all a matter of making sure every site shares the same documentRoot, and that the relevant dirs and settings.php files are in the sites directory.

The additional power here, is that you could share some database tables across installations, have a default set of modules and themes, but then allow other sites to have a different setup (alternate modules +/ themes), or just different databases. (I'm going to try setting this up sometime later to see how it all works - should save some valuable space on the server!)

The general consensus is that the dirs under the site directory should hold the site-specific stuff, so you'd have directories for modules, themes, and files)

Hopefully some of this may help; give me a shout if you need more! (I've done the multi-site setup thing quite a few times on different servers)

Cheers