Apache (httpd) server how to force redirect to a non-www domain under while under https

[Yaakov Chaikin <yaakov.chaikin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On a default installation of CentOS (on AWS), I have the following configuration in my conf.d directory. So, besides for this configuration, I just have the default conf/httpd.conf file.

What I am trying to achieve is a configuration that:

1) If URL starts with http://www.example.com, it goes to http://example.com

2) If URL starts with https://www.example.com, it goes to https://example.com

3) If URL starts with either http://example.com or https://example.com, it stays the same.

I was able to achieve #1 with the configuration below. However, to achieve #2, I have configuration that is currently commented out at the end. If I un-comment it, the server fails to start with the error message: Starting httpd: [Wed May 22 05:01:57 2013] [warn] default VirtualHost overlap on port 443, the first has precedence.

I am a bit confused as I thought the docs said that default is just an alias for '*'. If I change both port 443 VirtualHost entries to say *:443, the server start up still fails with the same error as above. However, if I change both port 443 VirtualHost entires to say default:443, the server starts up, but https://www.example.com/ request stays the same and no redirect happens.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong here and how to fix it would be highly appreciated!

Thank you!

-Yaakov.

Here is the configuration:

LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so
Listen 443
NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com
  ServerName example.com
  CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/example.com_log" common
  ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/example.com_error_log"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName www.example.com
  Redirect permanent / http://example.com/
</VirtualHost>

SSLPassPhraseDialog  builtin
SSLSessionCache         shmcb:/var/cache/mod_ssl/scache(512000)
SSLSessionCacheTimeout  300
SSLMutex default
SSLRandomSeed startup file:/dev/urandom  256
SSLRandomSeed connect builtin
SSLCryptoDevice builtin

<VirtualHost _default_:443>
  ServerName example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com
  ErrorLog logs/tech_expl_ssl_error_log
  TransferLog logs/tech_expl_ssl_access_log
  LogLevel warn
  SSLEngine on
  SSLProtocol all -SSLv2
  SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT:!SSLv2:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW
  SSLCertificateFile /etc/pki/tls/....
  SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/pki/tls/....
  SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/pki/tls/....
  <Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
      SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
  </Files>
  <Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
      SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
  </Directory>
  SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
           nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
           downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
  CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log \
            "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"
</VirtualHost>                                  

# VirtualHost to redirect to non-www domain
#<VirtualHost *:443>
#  ServerName www.example.com
#  Redirect permanent / http://example.com/
#</VirtualHost>