By vacilando on

I am on CentOS 5, Apache 2, in full control of the server. Domains set up using Plesk 8.

I have set up many multisites on a different Linux system and under different control panel. But here I am really lost!

Concretely: basically I have the core Drupal 5 install running fine in /var/www/vhosts/sitename.tld/httpdocs/

Then there is another website running in /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/httpdocs/ -- this is not a Drupal site, but I am porting it to Drupal. For that purpose, I have, using Plesk, created a subdomain called lab.sitename2.tld which Plesk physically created as /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/subdomains/lab/
The default index page in there displayed at lab.sitename2.tld, so I knew the subdomain was set up properly.
So I went to /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/subdomains/, renamed 'lab' to something else and went ahead with this symlink: ln -sv /var/www/vhosts/sitename.tld/httpdocs/ lab

Then I went to the browser and tried lab.sitename2.tld ... but I always keep getting "403 Forbidden You do not have permission to access this document." I looked at error_log for sitename2.tld and that says: "Symbolic link not allowed or link target not accessible: /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/subdomains/lab"

Somebody told me to make sure that /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/conf/httpd.include contained
Options FollowSymlinks
inside
<Directory /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/httpdocs>
and
<Directory /var/www/vhosts/lab.sitename2.tld/httpdocs>
so I've added that between these directory tags for both :80 and :443 ... no change, again the same error message!

I also made sure that settings.php in /var/www/vhosts/sitename.tld/httpdocs/sites/lab.sitename2.tld/ is chmod-ed to 755 (though I do not think Apache is getting that far as yet, really).

I also tried to keep the real /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/subdomains/lab/ and symlink just ln -sv /var/www/vhosts/sitename.tld/httpdocs/ httpdocs within it... with same results.

What I am confused about is that sitename.tld and sitename2.tld are "owned" (on Linux filesystem level) by two different users, but in the same group. I keep saying to myself this should not be an issue because Apache has access to both, yet I mention it here for completeness.

I really hope this strikes a familiar note in some Drupal multisite-experts out there. I have spent days trying to solve this, without success... I am totally out of ideas right now!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

DoubleMike’s picture

DoubleMike commented

I had this exact same problem before, and the way I solved it was to edit /var/www/vhosts/sitename2.tld/conf/vhost.conf (create that file if necessary) and add a line like this:

ServerAlias lab.sitename2.tld
or, if you want to redirect all subdomains:
ServerAlias *.sitename2.tld

Save the file, then run this command:

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -u --vhost-name=sitename2.tld

I hope this helps!

deanloh’s picture

deanloh commented

I followed these steps and got multisite working in Plesk (using subdomains).

I would like to find out, should I decide to undo this change, how do I go about reverting the command:
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -u --vhost-name=sitename2.tld

noctifer’s picture

noctifer commented

Excellent solution, thanks DoubleMike!

c0psrul3’s picture

c0psrul3 commented

if you create a domain alias within plesk (aliased to the initial drupal install) the domain will point to the initial install (as it would be assumed) and you can create your multi-site from within drupal from there.
i've found that some .conf files will get re-written easily and without notice by plesk.
if you prefer to edit the conf files, i see no real reason to be draining storage, resources, and possibly throwing away a free cert on plesk.
---only my 8.3.0 cents

vacilando’s picture

vacilando commented

c0psrul3, your solution was extremely elegant and I admit I never thought about solving this problem simply by creating a domain alias in Plesk. DoubleMike's solution is in fact similar, but manual. Wonderful, it works now, thanks a million, guys!!

—
Vacilando services | blog @vacilandois

chadcross’s picture

chadcross commented

Howdy. Creating a domain alias works perfectly if your multisite is installed in the main domain folder. You just create aliases for all urls you want handled by Drupal.

What I can't figure out is how to create an alias for a subdomain. We want to use subdomains to have multiple drupal installs so we can migrate to Drupal 6 later.

So we have multiple urls like:
site1.com
site2.com
site3.com

That we want to point to either of these subdomains:
drupal5.mysite.com
drupal6.mysite.com

I can't find any controls in Plesk to create aliases for subdomains. Maybe I keep the aliases for the main domain (mysite.com) and then make some sort of changes to the DNS records to point to the right subdomain? I am ultranoob when it comes to dns and servers.

Thanks

vacilando’s picture

vacilando commented

@chadcross - no problem - just go to the page for adding a new domain alias, but instead of a top level domain, add your subdomain! Subdomains can be totally unique sites, isolated from their main domains, from a DNS point of view. So e.g. main domain domain.com can have domain alias domain2.com but also sub.domain3.com!

—
Vacilando services | blog @vacilandois

happydrupal’s picture

happydrupal commented

I'm using Plesk's virtual host now. Even with a lot of restricitons like no root control, no shell command and no vhost, I would like to set up the following multi-site using different dbs using Drupal 6.

My first drupal site work very well with a small problem. But I have a very big problem with the 2nd & 3rd sites.
*) mydomain.tw
*) aaa.mydomain.tw ............... created in Plesk by subdomain
*) bbb.mydomain.tw ............... created in Plesk by subdomain

Document root of "mydomain.tw" is /httpdocs/ and Drupal was installed in the following file structures:
/httpdocs/drupal/sites/default/
/httpdocs/drupal/sites/default/default.php
/httpdocs/drupal/sites/default/files/
The site works fine! But I have to use the not so clean address, "http://mydomain.tw/drupal" to bring it out.
1) Can I use "http://mydomain.tw/" instead of "http://mydomain.tw/drupal" to bring out the site? If yes, how to set it up in the Plesk virtual host?

Root of "aaa.mydomain.tw" is under /subdmain/aaa/httpdocs/ and have the multi-site setting under the following structures:
/httpdocs/drupal/sites/aaa.mydomain.tw/
/httpdocs/drupal/sites/aaa.mydomain.tw/default.php
/httpdocs/drupal/sites/aaa.mydomain.tw/files/
I put .htaccess with the only line "redirect permanent / http://mydomain.tw/drupal" under the /subdmain/aaa/httpdocs/ to redirect "aaa.mydomain.tw" to "http://mydomain.tw/drupal". The install screen didn't pop up with errors but only the default Drupal site pops in the browser.
2) How can I redirect the subdomain to the Drupal correctly and bring the install screen successfully?

I think the two problem are actually the same, so please help to resolve the redirect issue.

Thanks in advance!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm happy since I'm using Drupal!!!

j.slemmer’s picture

j.slemmer commented

But I had to point to /install.php manually. That had me confused for a while.
it just generated a blank white page..

Mankot’s picture

Mankot commented

Hey,

I've tried the suggested solution. I got a running Drupal 6 installation on drupal6.domain.tld. Now I pointed 2 other subdomains to this location. I got the following structure within my Drupal 6:

sites/subdomain1.domain.tld/files/
sites/subdomain1.domain.tld/modules/
sites/subdomain1.domain.tld/themes/
sites/subdomain1.domain.tld/settings.php (with modified database settings)

sites/subdomain2.domain.tld/files/
sites/subdomain2.domain.tld/modules/
sites/subdomain2.domain.tld/themes/
sites/subdomain2.domain.tld/settings.php (with modified database settings)

I pointed the new subdomain1 and subdomain2 to the root of drupal6.domain.tld by adding this line to the vhost.conf

DocumentRoot /srv/www/vhosts/domain.tld/subdomains/drupal6/httpdocs

And I added the ServerAliases to the vhost.conf of the drupal6.domain.tld

ServerAlias subdomain1.domain.tld
ServerAlias subdomain2.domain.tld

Now when I'm trying to access subdomain1.domain.tld/install.php everything looks fine and the drupal 6 installer wants me to choose the language. But when I choose the language and press "select language" I end up in a whitescreen without any errors.

Summing up:

I wanna have Drupal 6 in drupal6.domain.tld and multisites on subdomain1.domain.tld and subdomain2.domain.tld using the same code base with different databases.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Some help would be appreciated

P.s. I got full root access via ssh on my server.

happydrupal’s picture

happydrupal commented

Try to find anther cPanel Hosting service which can create symlink easily....Then you will be happier.....that's my solution ..... IMHO

Mankot’s picture

Mankot commented

Thanks for your fast reply but that's definitly not the solution I was looking for ;) My hosting provider did a great job so far and my problem has nothing to do with Plesk, cPanel or the way I configured my domains. And as soon as I write this I found a solution for my problem.

For some reason the drupal installer takes very long this time. Too long for my server configuration. So I changed my max_execution_time to 0 in my php.ini and everything works fine! No reason for changing your host. Btw I don't need something like cPanel to create symlinks. But I prefer editing the vhost configurations manually to keep the native structure of plesk.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Hello

I have a similar setup like Mankot with Drupal and have a few question. But let me tell you first what I have so you'll understand what I want.

So I have two domains ... domain1.tld which also has a test.domain1.tld subdomain containing the Drupal codebase and where multisites will be running from. domain2.tld should point to the Drupal folder at test.domain1.tld ... This second domain2.tld is not an add-on nor alias-domain. It's a seperate domain with it's own Plesk folder structure...

DOMAIN1
httpdocs/NOTHING IN HERE ( for now )

This is the first installation and it's running
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/default/files/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/default/modules/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/default/themes/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/default/settings.php

This would be the second installation which isn't running
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain2.tld/files/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain2.tld/modules/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain2.tld/themes/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain2.tld/settings.php

I will have this test running with more domains so I'll have
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain3.tld/files/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain3.tld/modules/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain3.tld/themes/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain3.tld/settings.php
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain4.tld/files/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain4.tld/modules/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain4.tld/themes/
subdomains/test/httpdocs/sites/domain4.tld/settings.php

DOMAIN2 (DOMAIN3, DOMAIN4,...)
Should be pointing to the Drupal codebase.

What's next to be done ...
vhost.conf method

I asume that I have to go to the conf folder of domain2.tld (domain3.tld, domain4.tld,...) and change the DocumentRoot in the vhost.conf file to

DocumentRoot /srv/www/vhosts/domain1.tld/subdomains/test/httpdocs

or is this done in the vhost.conf file of domain1.tld

How about the symlinks method. What would I have to write and where ( domain1.tld/httpdocs or domain1.tld/subdomains/test/httpdocs or domain2.tld/httpdocs ) would I have to create those symlinks to make this going?

I'm asking this as well because I don't have root access on the server right at this time. Any ideas?

Thanks

Gregsim’s picture

Gregsim commented

I have the same question as you about setting up multiple sites on a Plesk server. I have another problem which may or may not have a bearing on your problem.

I have a web site running under Plesk on a Windows server which is not a Drupal site. I want to replace it with a Drupal site so I set up the same domain under Plesk on a CentOS Linux server. (Both at PowerVPS). My intend is to transfer the DNS to the new server once I have the site looking good enough to shut down the old site.

I uploaded the drupal files and set up the MySQL database. Plesk provides a preview link with which I had hoped to run the install program - but it keeps linking to the Windows server where the domain is currently active. For some reason Plesk does a DNS lookup and links to the Windows machine instead of just following the path on the Linux server that happens to contain the domain name. Maybe something similar is going on in your setup.

For my problem, I suppose I could set up the new site with a fictitious domain name and then rename it later, but I am worried that the Plesk renaming function will not rename all the instances within the Drupal files where the domain appears and the site will break.

Perhaps the only solution for me is to develop it on a localhost and then export and upload it to the live server. I am new to Drupal and I see many people reporting problems with moving sites from one server to another so I had hoped to develop the site on the same server where I plan to host it.

Anybody have another idea?

Thanks.

summit’s picture

summit commented

Subscribing, looking for solution for multisite setup Drupal 7, domain module and server at Strato.
Greetings, Martijn

scrimmage’s picture

scrimmage commented

Just in case it helps, this is how I did it using domain aliases in Plesk

I wanted to have two sites running off the same codebase - let's call them master.com and servant.com


In Plesk

for master.com

1. Add a domain for master.com
2. Do normal Drupal install stuff

for servant.com

1. add a new domain alias for master.com
2. call it www.servant.com
3. create a new database and user for servant.com. Let's say database name: servantdb, user:servantdbuser


In the site folder that was created when you installed master.com...

1. create a new write-enabled folder called servant.com
2. in that folder create another write-enabled folder called 'files' (no single speech marks)


settings.php stuff

1. Duplicate the settings.php file located in sites/default
2. Pop that settings.php file in the folder called servant.com
3. Edit settings.php (in the folder called servant.com).

About 1/5 of the way down, line 184

'database' => 'servantdb',
'username' => 'servantdbuser',
'password' => 'enter password for the user called servantdbuser'.


In your browser

1. Go to www.servant.com/install.php
2. follow the installation instructions.

This bit confused me because I thought the installer was putting a new full version of Drupal into the folder called servant.com. It doesn't.

3. Log into your websites at master.com and at servant.com.
4. To test, create a different piece of content for each front page.

You have two separate sites running from one full installation of Drupal.

sijuwi’s picture

sijuwi commented

What i need to do through plesk is create a subdomain which redirects to the primaru domain - this does not seem possible using the alias?