Browse a website on localhost from remote device

Question

I am on ubuntu 12.04. Hosts file:

127.0.1.1 site.to.browse

Vhost:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName site.to.browse
    DocumentRoot "/path/to/website/root"
    <Directory /path/to/website/root>
        AllowOverride All
        Options All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

On my android device that is connected to the same WIFI as the host I try to access this site with

192.168.178.57/site.to.browse

but I get a 404. When I browse just 192.168.178.57/ I get my default IT WORKS page.

Any ideas how to access the specified website?

Answer 1

You need to add

192.168.178.57 site.to.browse

to the hosts file on your android phone, so that it knows that http://site.to.browse/ refers to your server at 192.168.178.57.

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If you want to access your vhost using http://192.168.178.57/site.to.browse instead, you'll need to do a local URL rewrite on the default vhost that redirects the page request to the desired vhost. So, in the Apache configuration for the default vhost, add

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/*site\.to\.browse/*(.*)$ http://site.to.browse/$1 [PT,L]

Unfortunately, this causes a discrepancy between the URL the client uses (say, http://192.168.178.57/site.to.browse/some/page.html) and the one that the server actually serves (http://site.to.browse/some/page.html). In particular, absolute paths (/some/page.html) will not be redirected correctly.

You can avoid this by reverse-proxying the internal vhost from the default vhost, using e.g. mod_proxy_html and/or mod_substitute to adjust URLs and paths in the content.

A much more practical approach, for testing, is to put everything interesting in your vhost inside a top folder, so that absolute URLs will only differ by the hostname part. For this, you need

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/*site\.to\.browse/*(.*)$ http://site.to.browse/site.to.browse/$1 [PT,L]

in the Apache configuration for the default vhost, and

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/*site\.to\.browse$ /site.to.browse/ [R,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/*site\.to\.browse/
RewriteRule ^/*(.*)$ /site.to.browse/$1 [R,L]

in the vhost configuration; this latter part will redirect any http://site.to.browse/foo to http://site.to.browse/site.to.browse/foo, including http://site.to.browse/ to http://site.to.browse/site.to.browse/.

Obviously, you don't need to use site.to.browse as the folder name; you could just use e.g. mysite. The configuration would then be

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/*mysite/*(.*)$ http://site.to.browse/mysite/$1 [PT,L]

on the default vhost, and

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/*mysite$ /mysite/ [R,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/*mysite/
RewriteRule ^/*(.*)$ /mysite/$1 [R,L]

in the site.to.browse vhost. The latter will redirect anything not under the mysite folder to under the mysite folder.

Answer 2

If you really want to access the site by http://192.168.178.57/site.to.browse/ then I would simply add the following line to your /etc/apache2/sites-available/default inside the default VirtualHost:

Alias /site.to.browse /path/to/website/root

<Directory /path/to/website/root>
    AllowOverride All
    Options All
</Directory>

Explanation: The VHost configuration you provided in your question will have no effect in this case.

The android client will send a request to the host identified by the IP Address, not the DNS-Name site.to.browse. Thus HTTP_HOST will be 192.168.178.57. So Apache won't take you vhost configuration since you don't request something from the host site.to.browse. Instead, apache's default config will be used which lives in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default.

As an alternative you could just replace the default It Works page by your own page, thus making the page available as http://192.168.178.57.

Of course you have to ensure that apache also binds to the machine's public IP. Since you get the It works page I take that as granted.

Answer 3

You need edit your vhost or .htaccess

RewriteEngine On    # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteRule    ^site.to.browse$    index.php    [NC,L]