Configuring virtual hosting

Policy checklist

• Website developed, not a placeholder
• Website hosted substantially on the OCF
• For RSOs, website has required university disclaimer on every page
• Website has hosted by OCF banner on the front page that is noticeable without undue effort and links to the OCF home page
• Request is made by a registered and active student organization in CalLink (LEAD Center), request is sponsored by an administrative official, or request is for the account of a faculty or staff member
• For RSOs, request is made by a signatory of the group in question (use signat group <group> to see signatories)
• For faculty/staff, the requestor has already obtained a domain from e.g. their department
• Account does not already have a virtual host, or has an exception from a Site Manager
• For RSOs, domain name complies with LEAD Center guidelines. In particular, requested domain name is sufficiently similar to their official name and wouldn't potentially be confused with a university department.
• For non-berkeley.edu domains, domain name has been approved by a (D)GM or (D)SM. (We wish to keep the number of these domains under check to limit the number of non-berkeley.edu domain owners we have to contact when our web server or mail server DNS changes.)

Enabling virtual hosting

Web

Edit the file configs/vhost.conf in the ocf/etc repo, adding new entries at the top. The format is documented at the top of that file.

This takes effect at the top of every hour when a cronjob runs. HTTPS should available shortly afterwards (within 5-10 minutes). Keep in mind that vhosts are not available without HTTPS, so there may be a short period of time where the new vhost is unavailable or giving a certificate error.

Next, request the following DNS record from the University hostmaster:

hostname.studentorg.berkeley.edu. IN CNAME hosting.ocf.berkeley.edu.

Use the domain requested by the group in place of hostname. We have a reusable email template for making new DNS requests. This email should be sent to hostmaster@nic.berkeley.edu and sm+vhost@ocf.berkeley.edu.

Update 2025-08-26: Use this link instead: DNS DHCP and IP Addressing

Make sure to include the name and CalLink OID of the requesting RSO.

Answers to the following questions (provided by the requestor of the subdomain) should be sent to the University hostmaster along with the DNS request itself.

1. The purpose of the hostname and who will be using it

2. A responsible contact for the hostname

3. Acknowledgment that all relevant university policies will be followed, including those pertaining to campus website accessibility

Mail (if requested)

Edit the file configs/vhost-mail.conf in the ocf/etc repo, adding a new line for the group at the top of the file. The format is simply:

groupname domainname

This takes effect after around 30 minutes (once puppet has run and synced ocf/etc), allowing the group to edit their email config (and the mail server will start accepting incoming/outgoing mail), but you still need to update the DNS so that they can actually receive mail.

We request the same DNS records for mail hosting as for web hosting. First, check if any DNS records already exist with

dig hostname.berkeley.edu A AAAA MX

for IPv4/IPv6/mail records, respectively. If they have all the records from the previous section, you don't have to do anything else.

If not, make the same request to the University hostmaster as in the previous section. If you see this record:

hostname.Berkeley.EDU. IN CNAME death.OCF.Berkeley.EDU.

then include in your request to the hostmaster that it be dropped.

We have a reusable email template for making DNS mail requests for groups that have old CNAME records.

Mail virtual hosting may be requested separately from website virtual hosting and without a completely developed website.

Application hosting

The group website should be reasonably developed (can be offsite during review only for this request) before approving it.

You will need a /admin principal to modify apphosting entries.

• Add the group account to the ocfapphost LDAP group:

  $ ldapvi cn=ocfapphost
  memberUid: ggroup
  memberUid: GROUP_USERNAME
  

• Add a new apphost entry to the top of configs/vhost-app.conf in the ocf/etc repo. The file syntax is:

  account vhost_name socket_name ssl_name
  

  The config file contains examples and more documentation.

• Wait for puppet to sync /etc/ocf and for the cronjob to update configurations (runs every 10 minutes).

Once the cronjob completes, the application will be available at:

VHOST_NAME-berkeley-edu.apphost.ocf.berkeley.edu

VHOST_NAME is the configured name from above.

Once the website is developed and meets policy checklist, request the following DNS record from the University hostmaster:

hostname.studentorg.berkeley.edu. IN CNAME hosting.ocf.berkeley.edu.

Remember to request that any existing records be dropped as well. You can check for records with dig hostname.berkeley.edu [A|AAAA|MX]. The nginx running on apphosting server will return a 502 Bad Gateway or actual content if the apphost is configured properly, and a 403 Forbidden otherwise.