Jon wrote: > Gustin Johnson wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> Of course he may not be running his own servers (defenderhosting.com). >> I have seen a few control panel style front ends do both automatically >> in the background. > > Time for a subject change. > > Yup - as I indicated I'm using a managed VPS at the moment and it is a > cPanel environment. However, as I also stated, I've been simply creating > vhosts without the benefit of any DNS records for years now on unmanaged > servers and they've worked fine. > > There seems to be a few people that insist DNS records are needed for > subdomains, but nobody seems to want to tell me why. > > So...why?
The DNS entry is required to direct requests for the particular subdomain to the IP address where Apache (or other web server software) is running. Without the DNS entry, Apache never has a chance to act on the request because they never get to Apache. Instead, the user's browser says "host cannot be found" or something similar. Suppose I told you to telephone Widgets Inc but I didn't give you the phone number. Assuming you're going to call, you first go and look up the phone number in the phone book (assume pre-Internet here). If the phone book does not have an entry for Widgets Inc, you then have no way to call them because you don't have the phone number. Domains (and subdomains) are similar. If you don't have the IP address for the domain/subdomain, you can't make that "phone call" to Apache. In this case, DNS is the equivalent of the phone book; your web browser looks up the IP address in DNS and then makes the request to the IP address. So, let me re-iterate: There is absolutely no possible way to create a subdomain without having a DNS entry for it. Of course, there are always ways to hide that from the user, such as cPanel type interfaces. There is also the evil concept of wildcard DNS records. Perhaps you've got a wildcard entry in your DNS? Note that a wildcard DNS entry counts as having a DNS entry for the subdomain. -- William Astle finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for further information Geek Code V3.12: GCS/M/S d- s+:+ !a C++ UL++++$ P++ L+++ !E W++ !N w--- !D !M PS PE V-- Y+ PGP t+@ 5++ X !R tv+@ b+++@ !DI D? G e++ h+ y? _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
