This may be a dumb question but......

I have a client with a current website at www.currentdomain.com and they are having hosting issues so I have transferred their db and files of their Joomla install over to my dev machine and got it all working no probs.

I have now uploaded that same data to my Linode slice and would like to test it from there before going live but I am not sure what domain to use.

They want to keep running www.currentdomain.com at their old host until the Linode setup is 100% so I can;t swap over the DNS to point to Linode yet.

I thought I would setup www.currentdomain.dev in vhost.conf but that doesn't work.

I only have the one IP assigned to my server and that is being used by four websites on my slice. I could get another IP address for $1 but that seems like a silly way to solve the issue.

Any help would be great thanks.

For testing, you can modify your local PC's host file to point the existing domain to the new site.

However, if you want external entities to view it you may want to have a generic domain you can use and do it with subdomains or sub directories rather than asking them to modify their hosts file.

For example:

yourcompany.mysite.com

or

mysite.com/yourcompany/

Use your own domain and create a sub-domain for their site.

currentdomain.example.com (where example.com is your domain)

No need at all to get an additional IP, that would be a total waste. .dev isn't going to work because it's not a TLD, you'd have to create a host entry on every computer you want to connect to that domain if you did that.

For dev stuff, I generally use test.example.com or dev.example.com (where example.com is the real domain)

Try setting it up as dev.currentdomain.com instead.

Thx but how does that work if the DNS for their current domain is not pointing at linode?

It doesn't have to, just create an A record and point that to your IP address and create a vhost entry for that domain name.

Actually, dev.customerdomain.com is probably best too and you can do exactly the same thing.

customerdomain.com can be hosted anywhere and dev.customerdomain.com can be hosted any other place you desire (including Linode)

Thx I tried that but still get [error] (EAI 2)Name or service not known: Could not resolve host name dev.currentdomain.com

<VirtualHost dev.currentdomain.com:80>
        ServerAdmin blah@gmail.com
        ServerName dev.currentdomain.com
        ServerAlias dev.currentdomain.com
        DocumentRoot /srv/www/currentdomain/public_html/
        ErrorLog /srv/www/currentdomain/logs/error.log
        CustomLog /srv/www/currentdomain/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Thanks for your help.

Ok great thanks - didn't know about the A record part that makes a whole lot more sense now - live and learn

I set up the A record for "dev" under the customers domain name in the Linode DNS Manager but I am still getting "still get [error] (EAI 2)Name or service not known: Could not resolve host name dev.currentdomain.com" when I try to restart apache.

I only did the "dev" record and removed the "mail" and "www" record from the A records for that domain.

Not sure what I'm missing now...

Unless you're customer's name server settings for their domain point to Linode's name servers you'll have to go to their registrar or where ever their name servers are at and create the name record there and wait for it to sync through.

You can't just set it up in the linode DNS manager if that's not where their DNS already resided. You need to add that A record to their current DNS host.

Ok yeh that was my original problem as we don;t have access to do that right now.

Ok so if I setup any old domain name rather than theirs and do what ai just did for their domain name then all should work?

Can I just make up any fake domain name so long as noone else is using it? eg dev.freddy.com? Or do I ahve to own an actual domain name to use? I'm struggling a little getting my head around this bit.

I believe you will get a working domain name- like membersxxxx.freemont.linode.com.
http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm#do-i-need ... -my-linode

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Chris Bryant

Do you have you own domain that you have control over? If so, use that. But "freddy.com" or what ever has to be under your control or someone you're working with to be able to make changes or add an A record.

Also, if you have no access to your customer's registrar to change their name server or DNS settings, you'll never get their site up on Linode (or any other provider) to begin with.

Thx Waldo - think I got it now - really appreciate your help.

We will have access to the customer's domain very soon, they're just in a messy breakup with the clowns that are currently hosting their website. Usual story of cheap hosting gone wrong.