The following reply was made to PR mod_env/2256; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Simon Burr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: mod_env/2256: SetEnv can not over ride variables like SERVER_NAME, HTTP_HOST, etc Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 14:25:07 +0100 (BST) [EMAIL PROTECTED] said [Valid stuff snipped] The problem is that the public facing IP address of the site is not going to be the same as the IP address of the vhost on the backend. I'm limited in what I can say (ick :(, but I can say that a browser isn't going to be making the actual request to the web server - an accelerator is going to be on the browsers behalf. The result of this is that the browser does indeed send "web2.syseng.uk.uu.net" in the Host: header, but the web server dealing with the request is going to see "web2-real.syseng.uk.uu.net" in the Host: header of the request that reaches it. To get the vhosting working I need to put the web2-real bit in the ServerName... thus I need to over ride that bit so that CGI scripts see what they are expecting. I wish that I didn't have to over ride what is held in SERVER_NAME and HTTP_HOST, but in our situation - a large scale mass web hosting system - we're restricted in what we can do :( >It's a Good Idea not to allow people to mess with variables >which our documentation states will always be a certain >thing. Oh generally I'd agree with that. However there are some variables where it would be useful to over ride what the web server would place by default into it. PATH and TZ are two examples. The resetting of the SERVER_NAME and HTTP_HOST shouldn't normally be done, but in our case we need to do so :( -- Simon Burr Work: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Engineering, UUNET UK Play: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
