Re: Testing virtual hosts on a virtual machine

[Tom Evans <tevans.uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Florent Georges <darkman_spam@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

 Hi,

 I am using a virtual box (Ubuntu server 9.10 with VMware Fusion)
to test a web server.  No problem to install Apache on this
Ubuntu box, of course.  And I can access the default page after
an install by using http://xxx.xxx.xx.xx/ in my browser (on the
host machine.)

 But the web server will use named virtual hosts.  I guess that
won't work as the browser won't send the correct domain name.

 Is there any tool to test an Apache instance with virtual hosts
on a virtual machine?  Any best practice or advice to follow in
that configuration?

 Regards,

I've used a couple of different ways, depending on how magic/special you like it. I'll outline them in terms of difficulty :)

1) Add your testing hostname to /etc/hosts:

Eg, if you want to test www.foocorp.com, and your vm's IP address is 10.0.1.10, then put this in /etc/hosts

10.0.1.10 www.foocorp.com

In windows, this is <WINDOWS>\system32\drivers\etc\hosts or somewhere along those lines.

Once you do this, you can't go to the real www.foocorp.com without removing the /etc/hosts entry

2) Run squid on the VM

Squid can do almost anything with HTTP, and works quite well at this. Once you have squid configured as a regular cache, you add this kind of configuration:

acl tested_sites dstdomain www.foocorp.com
cache_peer my-regular-upstream-cache parent 3128 0 proxy-only default
cache_peer the-ip-of-the-vhost-apache parent 80 0
cache_peer_access my-regular-upstream-cache deny tested_sites
cache_peer_access the-ip-of-the-vhost-apache deny !tested_sites
never_direct allow all

Basically, this configuration says to send anything not in the tested_sites ACL to the regular upstream cache, whilst sending anything in tested_sites to the apache server. Apache and squid are robust enough to do this without any other changes. If you don't have an upstream squid, then the configuration would need to be different - I'm no squid expert, so check the manuals/squid mailing list if you want to do this.

Once you have squid set up and running, you can configure your browser to switch between using this proxy, and using your regular upstream proxy/no proxy. I use the firefox plugin SwitchProxy, two clicks to switch to my testing infrastructure.

The advantage of the squid approach is that the hacks are all centralized on one box, with no changes required on client machines, making it easier to allow access to your test infrastructure.

Cheers

Tom