Virtual Hosts on WAMP causing 403 forbidden on localhost... other aliases still work

Question

I just realized that nothing else on WAMP is accessible unless it's under the virtual host alias. For example: if I name my vHost 'mysite.dev', I can only access mysite.dev and everything else gives a 403 forbidden error. If I add a vHost called anothersite.dev in addition to mysite.dev, only those sites can be accessed. The only thing under localhost that I can access is PHPMyAdmin. I have uncommented the line that includes vHosts.conf in the Apache httpd.conf file. This problem does not happen until I modify the vHosts.conf file. Here is the config for the other files:

vHosts.conf:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
    DocumentRoot "c:/Apache24/docs/dummy-host.example.com"
    ServerName dummy-host.example.com
    ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com
    DocumentRoot "c:/Apache24/docs/dummy-host2.example.com"
    ServerName dummy-host2.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com
    DocumentRoot "W:/wamp/www/mysite"
    ServerName mysite.dev
    ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

Windows hosts file:

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.0.1   mysite.dev

You mean you can access dummy-host.example.com` in spite of not having a matching `hosts` entry? Can you double-check your config for `NameVirtualHost *:80`? — Ulrich Schwarz, Oct 22 '15 at 05:50

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

Ok first, the first 2 VHOST definitions in the httpd-vhost.conf file (vhost and vhost2) are examples, supplied by Apache, to help you get started and of course point to folders that do not exist so and should be removed.

Second When you create a Virtual Host you should include the access privilages for the VHOST in a <Directory....> group.

Third, you should always create a VHOST for localhost as once VHOSTs are created Apache ignores the localhost definition in httpd.conf

So your httpd-vhost.conf file should look like this

# Should be the first VHOST definition so that it is the default virtual host
# Also access rights should remain restricted to the local PC and the local network
# So that any random ip address attack will recieve an error code and not gain access
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@homemail.net
    DocumentRoot "W:/wamp/www"
    ServerName localhost
    <Directory  "W:/wamp/www">
        AllowOverride All
        Require local
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "W:/wamp/www/mysite"
    ServerName mysite.dev
    ErrorLog "logs/mysite.dev-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/mysite.dev-access.log" common
    <Directory  "W:/wamp/www/mysite">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require local
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Once you have done this, you now need to edit your c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to look like this. You need to have admin privilages to edit this file, also some anti virus suites also protect this file, so you may need to stop that protection temporarily in order to amend this file.

127.0.0.1  localhost
127.0.0.1  mysite.dev

::1  localhost
::1 mysite.dev

Then restart the dnscache to pick up these changes, from a command line also started with admin privilages.

net stop dnscache
net start dnscache

This post may help you understand more about Virtual Hosts

Virtual Hosts on WAMP causing 403 forbidden on localhost... other aliases still work

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