General Question

haegenschlatt's avatar

Why does my server always redirect to localhost when I visit a subdirectory on the server?

Asked by haegenschlatt (122points) October 2nd, 2010

System admins and Linux gurus, here’s one for you:

I’m a bit of a newbie at this. I installed nginx on a server that originally ran apache2. I tested out nginx and found that going to the server’s address worked fine, but whenever I went to http://serverip/folder it would redirect to http://localhost/folder and because I had nothing running on localhost, it would give me a 404 error.

I decided that I would try nginx at a later date and uninstalled it using apt-get—purge remove nginx and switched back to apache2.

When I started up apache2 I discovered that it had the same problem as well.

Yes, I have checked the hosts file on my machine, and on the server.

Yes, I made sure there was only one server daemon running at a time.

Yes, I have Googled it.

Can anybody help? I’m more than happy to provide my config files if you need them.

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

8 Answers

mrentropy's avatar

So, the server is different than the machine you’re working on? If that’s the case, I’d say make sure the server_name (or equivelent) is not set to “localhost”.

So, for nginex:
server {
listen 80 default;
server_name localhost;
server_name_in_redirect off;

that server_name should be set to the IP address of computer the server is running on.

I believe the servername directive in Apache’s httpd.conf does the same thing.

I could be really incredibly wrong, but that’s my best guess.

haegenschlatt's avatar

That appears to work!

Strangely enough, I tried that before, but it didn’t work.

Oh well. You take the car to a garage, and the check engine light turns off.

mrentropy's avatar

Computers are never working right unless they’re making their users look like nuts.

haegenschlatt's avatar

Actually, now it’s creating random 403 forbidden errors. I’ll take a look into this but if you happen to know off the top of your head what’s causing this could you please tell me?

And yes, I have checked the file permissions.

Thanks so much for your time!

mrentropy's avatar

If you’re trying to get to a directory rather than a file then you may have the directory browsing option turned off.

Or the option may be turned on, but there’s no file in there yet (or at least nothing like a ‘welcome.html’ or ‘index.html’ or whatever the default web page name is).

I’m not sure if a file permission problem will trigger a 403, but it’d be worth a look if the other two fail.

haegenschlatt's avatar

First one worked! Thanks a ton! I really appreciate your time.

Nice username, by the way. :-D

mrentropy's avatar

You are quite welcome. I know how incredibly frustrating these things can be.
Thanks :) I’ve had it since the days of BBS’.

Response moderated (Writing Standards)

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.

This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.

Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther