UCC uses Apache 2 as a webserver for its website and member web-hosting services.

Web Serving

Member domains (username.ucc.asn.au) and the main website resolve as CNAMEs to Mussel.

The configuration for member VirtualHosts is on mussel in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/members.conf. These VirtualHost entries simply set the DocumentRoot to the public-html/ folder in the user's home directory. The members.conf configuration file is automatically generated by zonemake.py, a Python script which manages DNS zones on Monnik.

How to Set Up Your Website

When you log in to your home directory, use the command cd into the file called public-html. Use the command ls to view the files in this folder. It will have a file called index.html, this is the text file connected to the member domain of your website. To edit the index.html file open it up with a text editor such as nano or vim. You will need to use html code to edit the file.

SSL

Historically, HTTPS services were hosted under https://secure.ucc.asn.au, which also points to mussel (though it uses the interface listening on 130.95.13.28, not 130.95.13.18). Originally, this was because we didn't want to buy an SSL certificate for every machine. Now we have a wildcard certificate, so subdomains1 can be accessed using HTTPS as well! Have a look at /etc/apache2/sites-available/secure.conf on mussel to see how it's configured (it's world-readable).

  1. SSL wildcards are not actually wildcards — they only support one level of subdomain, so *.ucc.asn.au won't match something.weird.ucc.asn.au. (1)