[gopher] Gophernicus 1.2-beta & virtual hosting

[Walter Vermeir]

Hi Kim,

I have read this yesterday (thanks!) but wished to play more with the 
server before responding.

Op 15-09-11 15:58, Kim Holviala schreef:
> On 14.9.2011 17:10, Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
>>> "The primary vhost directory (set with the -h<HOSTNAME>  option) 
>>> must exist
>>> or virtualhosting will be disabled."
>>
>> What hostname? I understood it as the hostname of the server, not the 
>> domainname
>
> FQDN, as in the hostname your users will use to come in. Again, badly 
> written documentation...
>

Well, I had it understood as a FQDN and also configured it so. But when 
something does not work like you wish it to work you start looking at a 
reason. And I got the idea, maybe I have understood hostname here 
wrongly as a domainname.

But regarding documentation, the part about the command line options, I 
did figured it out, but some practical examples would be useful there also.

But.... that is a good idea for my new gophersite .... about how to 
setup a gophersite, my experiences and advice.


         So with the settng in xinetd at  -hvermeir.dyndns.org I created 
the
>> directory /var/gopher/vermeir.dyndns.org
>>
>> The only result was that vermeir.dyndns.org did serv directly from
>> that new directory but also gopher.wikizine.org
>
> OK, now we're talking, it's actually working.
>
> Gopher the protocol doesn't have virtual hosting. What Gophernicus 
> does is fake vhosting, the kind we used to do in HTTP in ~1997 before 
> HTTP/1.1 and it's fancy Host: header came along.
>
> The way it works is simple: if a user has visited any virtual domain 
> before that's where he'll stay. If not, he'll get the default virtual 
> host menu (in your case /var/gopher/vermeir.dyndns.org). The trick is 
> to have a generic "directory" page in your default virtual host 
> gophermap. That way a new user can select the vhost he wants to be in.
>
> Also, if content only exists in one vhost then the user is redirected 
> there.
>
> Example:
>
> gopher://holviala.com/1/~kim/
> gopher://gophernicus.org/1/software/
>
> Both resolve to the same IP and are just vhosts in a single server. 
> Browse around my comics collection and you'll stay under holviala.com, 
> and do the same for gopher software and you'll stay in 
> gophernicus.org. However, if you'll wait for your session to expire 
> (or are simply a new user) AND open up the root selector then you'll 
> *always* land into the same root menu (as the system doesn't know 
> where you want to be). The way I solved that was to simply remove the 
> holviala.com root and combine them into the same gophernicus.org root.


This explains a lot. It seems that I had an different definition of the 
concept "virtual hosting". Then it is logical "that it does not work".

I will (at least for now) not use this virtual hosting. A gopher link is 
still a URL. I find it very important that a url always point to the 
same spot. In any case, that makes things more simpler, and that is 
where it is all about with gopher, keeping it simple.

>
> =/home/kim/shared/code/gophernicus/server/examples/counter/counter.sh 
> "We're not counting, but you're visitor number " "."
>
>
>
>
> - Kim
>

I have found at your gophersite stats scripts but .... found it!
gopher://holviala.com/1/~kim/code/gophernicus/server/examples/counter/

I like your visitor counter ;)

Thanks for all the help and especialy for making Gophernicus.

Walter