problem with setting private IP address

Virtualmin
1

I’ve got a strange problem. I’m trying to set a sub domain up to have a static IP address, but when I have set it the virtual server displays the default webserver content. Also it only appears to do this with a specific domain name. a test on another virtual server works fine.

There must be something obvious I’m missing here but I just can’t see it.

Thanks,

Paul

2

Howdy,

What steps are you using to setup the private IP?

Normally, you’d do that by going into Server Configuration -> Change IP address.

-Eric

3

Hi Eric,

Yes that’s exactly what I am doing. I’m putting in my private IP address, Virtualmin output:

Updating IP address in virtual server sub.mydomain.co.uk 
Adding virtual IP interface for 123.456.78.910 ..
.. created interface eth0:15

Changing IP address in DNS domain ..
.. done

Changing IP address of virtual website ..
.. done

Saving server details ..
.. done

Re-starting DNS server …
… done

Applying web server configuration …
… done

But when I go to sub.mydomain.co.uk I get the default (shared IP) of the web server.

Can this happen if my server provider messed up the allocation of IP addresses?

Thanks,

Paul

4

Can this happen if my server provider messed up the allocation of IP addresses?

Well, that seems unlikely… it seems more likely that this would occur if there’s some kind of IP address mismatch in the config files, or a DNS cache issue of some sort.

Are you still having that problem today?

If so – if you go to this site and enter your domain “sub.mydomain.co.uk”, does it show the correct IP address:

http://www.dnsqueries.com/en/dns_query.php

5

yes it does show the correct IP address that has been set in the DNS and Apache. And when you browse the site using the IP address the site as expected appears. However when you browse to the domain name it is showing the default site for the web server on the shared IP address.

to me it now seems like a DNS issue but am not sure how to resolve it.

Another question - if you change the IP address of a subdomain, should it also change the IP address of the parent domain?

6

----SOULTION----

I had almost the exact same issue… that has been bugging the hell out of me.

I was trying to setup SSL for a virtual server. I had already purchased a dedicated IP address and followed steps at https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/tutorial/how-to-add-an-ssl-certificate. Unfortunately after changing the IP for the virtual server, the domain name did not resolve to the new private IP address, even after doing a DNS flush. But when I visit the IP via HTTP (for example, http://xxx.xxx.xxx.200), I could see the site perfectly fine.

The solution is to change your domain’s A Record to the new IP address so that the domain name will resolve to the new IP. As a result Apache, will know what to do with the host and display the virtual server’s web contents.

Useful tools to check DNS propagation https://www.whatsmydns.net and DNS records http://mxtoolbox.com.

7

If you use the “Change IP Address” function of Virtualmin, it should automatically update the DNS zone for you. Of course it’s possible that it did not do that for some reason, depending on the exact procedure you used.