Ubuntu hosts and hostname mystery

[bsodmike]

Hi,

I'm facing bit of a conundrum with my new server. It is essentially a distributed-virtual Plesk Virtuoso container with a rather simple LAMP setup (PHP5 etc) and virtual hosting.

The issue is that on each reboot, the /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname files are reset with their original configs causing the virtual hosting to break, i.e. rather than hosting the vhosts correctly, it essentially routes all traffic to /var/www, or essentially 000-default ~ this beats the whole point of vhosting in the first place!

Questions:

1. Is there any way to set both files as no longer writable etc?
2. How can I get around them being overwritten at boot?

A very crude workaround would be to set a script to load at boot via init.d and have it rewrite both files to their correct configs - of course, I have no idea as to the point during boot at which they get replaced.

I am running out of hair to pull at this point....

Thanks in advance!
Mike.

[Flash477]

Look at /etc/sysconfig/network

[bsodmike]

Look at /etc/sysconfig/network

There is no 'sysconfig'. That's only for redhat I think. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

ODBCDataSources dpkg lsb-release rc2.d
X11 environment lynx-cur rc3.d
adduser.conf fonts magic rc4.d
aliases fstab magic.mime rc5.d
alternatives gai.conf mail rc6.d
anacrontab groff mailcap rcS.d
apache2 group mailcap.order resolv.conf
apm group- manpath.config resolvconf
apparmor gshadow mime.types rmt
apparmor.d gshadow- mke2fs.conf rpc
apt host.conf modprobe.conf sasldb2
bash.bashrc hostname modprobe.d screenrc
bash_completion.d hosts modules securetty
bindresvport.blacklist hosts.allow motd security
blkid.conf hosts.deny mtab services
blkid.tab init mtools.conf shadow
ca-certificates init.d mysql shadow-
ca-certificates.conf init.removed nanorc shells
calendar initramfs-tools network skel
complete.tcsh inittab networks ssh
console inputrc nsswitch.conf ssl
console-tools insserv odbc.ini sudoers
cracklib insserv.conf opt sudoers.d
cron.d insserv.conf.d pam.conf sysctl.conf
cron.daily iproute2 pam.d sysctl.d
cron.hourly issue papersize syslog.conf
cron.monthly issue.net passwd terminfo
cron.weekly ld.so.cache passwd- timezone
crontab ld.so.conf perl ucf.conf
csh ld.so.conf.d php5 udev
csh.cshrc ldap ppp ufw
csh.login legal profile update-motd.d
csh.logout libpaper.d profile.d updatedb.conf
dbus-1 locale.alias protocols vim
debconf.conf localtime python vz
debian_version logcheck python2.6 warnquota.conf
default login.defs quotagrpadmins wgetrc
defoma logrotate.conf quotatab wide-dhcpv6
deluser.conf logrotate.d rc.local
depmod.d lsb-base rc0.d
dhcp3 lsb-base-logging.sh rc1.d

[Flash477]

Sorry, I'm running CentOS, although I thought that was pretty standard.

Looking at the man page for Ubuntu hostname you might want to check if it is set in either of these files:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1
/etc/init.d/boot

[watercooled]

After editing the hosts file, run:

echo servername.domain.com > /etc/hostname
/etc/init.d/hostname.sh start

Replacing servername.domain.com with your server name obviously.

[bsodmike]

Sorry, I'm running CentOS, although I thought that was pretty standard.

Looking at the man page for Ubuntu hostname you might want to check if it is set in either of these files:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1
/etc/init.d/boot

Thanks but I couldn't locate those

README network-interface sendmail
anacron network-interface-security sendsigs
apache2 networking single
bootlogd ondemand skeleton
console-screen.sh plymouth ssh
cron plymouth-log stop-bootlogd
fetchmail plymouth-splash stop-bootlogd-single
halt plymouth-stop sysklogd
hostname portmap udev
hwclock procps udev-finish
hwclock-save quota udevmonitor
iptables quotarpc udevtrigger
keymap.sh rc umountfs
killprocs rc.local umountnfs.sh
klogd rcS umountroot
libpam-foreground reboot urandom
module-init-tools rsync vzquota
modules_dep.sh saslauthd wide-dhcpv6-client
mysql screen-cleanup

[watercooled]

What about using chmod to remove write permissions?

[bsodmike]

What about using chmod to remove write permissions?

That made no difference. I did a 'chmod a-w' on both files; rebooted and they were back to defaults.

edit: I did a chattr +i on the files and got the external hostname set by our host.

[ikonia]

ok - in my view stop trying to put little dirty fixes in to resolve this.

Something is changing your hostname, that's a serious issue, you need to know what that is and fix it.

This should not happen on a default ubuntu install so you've got to look at any packages you've installed

a.) from the ubuntu repo's post install
b.) any packages you've installed from external repos

run through the init scripts (keep in mind 10.04 will use upstart scripts) and search out /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts

Also consider dhcp, is dhcp setting this for you ?

as anything else changing, eg: the ip addresses in /etc/hosts, your dns servers for example ?

[bsodmike]

Thanks for your reply Ikonia; I shared your sentiments exactly and really couldn't rest until I did find the root of the problem. It's to do with the way Virtuozzo containers work; the hostname is stored externally!

Most hosting companies probably present their clients with a very complex control panel - this is not the case with MediaTemple. When one purchases a 'slice', essentially, the Primary Domain is used as the external hostname.

Therefore, on reboots, those two files will always change to the primary domain.

This would typically work on any Ubuntu setup if the sites were being served either from /var/www or /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default. In our case it wasn't the latter per say - we are using vhosting with 'a2ensite' etc. Of course, with a2ensite, we'd essentially enable something like "/etc/apache2/sites-available/ourdomain.com".

If /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname = ourdomain.com, DUMP_VHOSTS shows that the vhosting breaks. That's why hosts and hostname needed to be something very different from the actual domain(s) used.

Thankfully, this is sorted now and thanks to all for your help/support

Cheers, Mike.