From: "Steven Levine" <ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com>
Message-ID: <67005208.9.mr2ice.fgrirsq@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2024 13:37:28 -0700
To: "eCS ISP Mailing List" <ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com>
In-Reply-To: <list-11062655@2rosenthals.com>
Subject: Re: [eCS-ISP] SSL certs & apache 2.4.61

In <list-11062655@2rosenthals.com>, on 10/04/24
   at 01:58 PM, "Lewis G Rosenthal" <ecs-isp@2rosenthals.com> said:

Hi,

>I don't quite think that's getting to the heart of what Max is asking 
>(though it is the most correct approach).

I chose to ignore Massimo question as asked and chose to answer the
question that he should have asked.

>What the actual question is (AFAICT) is whether there is a way to start 
>httpd without one or more (mis)configured vhosts. As an example, say I
>have  a server with 20 vhosts configured, and all but one get proper cert
>updates,  leaving that one site "broken." httpd will refuse to start, and
>the other 19  vhosts are then also taken offline, just because of a
>single failure. So, is  there a way to force Apache to ignore the broken
>vhost?

>The answer, of course, is no, there is no magic option to pass to httpd
>or  put in the vhosts.conf (IF_NOT_BROKEN) to allow for such behavior.
>However,  it is not necessary to go to great lengths to script anything,
>either.

FWIW, it's relatively trival to instrument the httpd conf files to start
only a selected set of virtual hosts.  Depending on the number of hosts,
it might be easier to define the hosts not the be started.

The basic logic in this case would be to define the hosts not to start in
a environment variable.  Let's say

  set HOSTS_NOT_TO_START=,foobar,

Each vitual host definition would be wrapped in and <If ...> directive

  <If ! ${HOSTS_NOT_TO_START} ~= ",foobar,">
    <VirtualHost ...>
      ServerName foobar
       ...
    </VirtualHost>
  </If>

The commas make it easier to avoid false posiitives.

Of course trivial though it might be, the httpd conf edits are
sufficiently tedious so that I will continue to use httpd -t.

Steven

-- 
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"Steven Levine" <steve53@earthlink.net>  Warp/DIY/BlueLion etc.
www.scoug.com www.arcanoae.com www.warpcave.com
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