[Discuss] ssh tunnels

[bill at horne.net (Bill Horne)]

On 2/22/2013 11:04 AM, Rich Pieri wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:00:13 -0500
> Bill Horne<bill at horne.net>  wrote:
>
>> Speaking of ssh tunnels, can someone figure out how to tunnel through
>> ssh to a virtual domain?
> Clarify what you mean by "virtual domain".

Many web servers, mine included, are set up so that they deliver 
different pages, based on which domain name is included in the http 
headers sent with the request.

For example:

67.190.84.154 - - [17/Feb/2013:15:42:25 -0800] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 4816 
"http://billhorne.com/"; "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) 
Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0"

Since the "200" line includes the domain name, Apache knows that it 
needs to deliver a "splash" page from the "billhorne.com" tree. If the 
request were for  the "william-warren.com" domain, Apache would deliver 
a "splash" page appropriate for a different domain. The point is that 
Apache needs to see the domain name in the "200" request, in order to 
know which page to deliver. That's why it's called a "virtual domain": 
it doesn't depend on the IP address per se.

Of course, it's also possible to set up the server so that it delivers 
the same page no matter which domain name is included in the headers. 
There is usually a default "splash" page to handle requests that are for 
an invalid domain, or which were sent with only an IP address. Since ssh 
tunnels require that the browser access the tunneled site via a 
localhost port, Apache doesn't get the desired domain name in the 
header, and it delivers the default page instead of the one that the 
user wanted.

Bill

-- 
Bill Horne
339-364-8487