I have a whole ton of domains that I'd like to point at a website.

for example, domain xyz.com should end up bringing up website abc.com (with abc.com in the bowser address bar).

I'm using debian/apache2

Now, I could go & make a ton of websites with a redirect on them, but then I'd have to add a ton of sites into sites_available virtual host entries, plus make a bunch of redirects.

Is there an easier way, perhaps with dns?

I'm a bit of a noob here, so syntax would be most helpful.

thanks!

Use DNS:

abc.com.   A       12.34.56.78
uvw.com.   CNAME   abc.com.
xyz.com.   CNAME   abc.com.

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/ Peter

perfect. thanks !

wait - is this in the dns record for abc.com or xyz.com?

That would only work if placed in the .com zone, which is probably exceedingly unlikely. Also, it wouldn't solve the telling-Apache-about-it problem.

You're going to end up needing to create each domain individually in the DNS manager, but you can use ServerAlias in Apache to specify alternate names for a virtual host:

ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
ServerAlias example.org
ServerAlias www.example.org
...

I believe there's an option in Apache that'll have it redirect requests for ServerAliases to the ServerName, too, but it's been awhile and I can't recall what it is. (If not, mod_redirect would work too.)

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/* TODO: need to add signature to posts */

This part won't work with pure DNS, will it?. I think you're gonna have to do Apache redirects.

The DNS Manager won't let you do specifically that, due to a strict reading of RFC 1912 section 2.4. If it were www.uvw.com, it would work.

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Disclaimer: I am no longer employed by Linode; opinions are my own alone.

I took the examples from mactac's question -- I should have been more careful / specific.

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/ Peter