Multisite on a LAMP

Thanks for the explanation. From what I understood, I need to either

A) Change the symlink so that it's in /var/www/html/ (the web root directory where Drupal is installed) and have it point to the directory /var/www/html/sites/mysite.com.com/ (which contains the files of my new site).

OR

B)Create an aliased path in my Apache 2 webserver config so that when Apache receives a URL it checks one of my hosted sites.

I'll look into doing B, thanks!

First you need to spell out what the urls for each of your sites are supposed to be.

So, I believe I'm not having any problems with "Stage 1" since my first (i.e. Drupal) site works fine.

Not quite. The test for stage 1 isn't that your original site still works - it's that every url for all your multisites gets you to your original working site. It still sounds like stage 1 hasn't been set up properly.

First, I created a new symlink that is located in the root directory (i.e. /var/www/html/) and points to the settings.php file belonging to the site I'm trying to add (mysite.com).

So you have a settings.php (linked from /sites/mysite.com/settings.php) sitting in your root directory? Drupal doesn't look for settings.php files in it's root directory, so that won't do anything.

I also tried pointing the symlink to the mysite.com directory (/var/www/html/sites/mysite.com). Neither one of these got the site to work.

Again why?

The only symlinks involved should be in your Drupal root directory and point back up to your Drupal root directory.

eg if you main site is http://localhost and you want another site at http://localhost/subsite, you create a link called subsite in the root directory (this is what Apache will follow for http://localhost/subsite) and that link points at '..' (ie it's parent directory which is the Drupal root directory). That way a request for http://localsite/subsite/index.php really gets served by http://localhost/index.php - which is your main Drupal site.

That is the stage 1 testing I talked about - when your subsite gives you your original site, stage 1 is working properly.

Secondly, like you advised, I reconfigured my Apache2 webserver by adding the directive "ServerName http://localhost/html/mysite.com" to the file "default" in /etc/apache2/sites-available/. I also tried creating an aliased path using the derivative "ServerAlias http://localhost/html/mysite.com". Unfortunately, neither one resolved the problem.

ServerName and ServerAlias are for hostnames (eg for the top level server setup or in virtual hosts) not urls and have nothing to do with subdirectories. The ServerAlias directive completely separate from the Alias directive.

Note: during stage 1 nothing in your web server configuration will have anything to do with anything under your sites directory - the sites directory is only involved in stage 2 which is purely Drupal - no symlinks or Apache directives in sight. The stuff in /sites is internal to Drupal - nothing to do with web servers.

Also note: (stage 2 only) if you create a directory /sites/mysite.com that isn't going to match something like http://localhost/mysite.com it is for matching http://mysite.com - you should leave dots out of subdirectory based site names or Drupal will think they are hostnames.

But I'll reiterate - you won't be able to get more specific help until you spell out exactly what sites you want and what their urls (are they subdirectories or hostnames etc) will be. It would probably also help if you explained your usecase as to why you want multisite - you might not even need it.

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Cheers
Anton

Why do you think you need multisite?

What is wrong with two independent Drupal installs in two different directories?

I really see no need for you to even be bothering with multisite. Personally (others disagree with me) I think multisite is in most cases an unnecessary complication, and unless you understand how your webserver works and what happens to an incoming HTTP request I'd recommend avoiding it. Once you know about how webservers work and how Drupal processes an incoming request, multisite is a complete doddle to explain.

But just to clarify what you are trying to do now that you've explained it:

A site called "indieflixs.com" is hostname based site, not a subdirectory based site. So you don't need symlinks at all - symlinks are one way of rerouting a request to a subdirectory back up to the parent directory. Because your site url has no subdirectory, that redirection isn't needed.

For hostname based multisites you would create a virtual host (with the same DocumentRoot as your main site) in Apache for that URL. And you would also need to update your DNS (or just edit your PCs hosts file) to point that hostname at your server.

But getting back to your questions on (now irrelevant) subdirectory based sites:

I interpreted this to mean that I create a symlink in my root directory and have it point to the directory of my new site (i.e. sites/indieflix.com).

No. The symlink lives in your root directory and points back at the root directory. It effectively mimics a whole new Drupal installation in the symlink subdirectory even though you only have one set of files.

that made me think that I might need an index.php file in sites/indieflix.com. Is this right?

No. There is always only one index.php file in Drupal. You need to get it out of your head that directories under /sites are web addressesable or have anything to do with web server configs / browsers etc.

The /sites subdirectories are just places to store internal Drupal settings for different urls. When Drupal (ie the index.php file back up in the root directory) processes an incoming request it looks for matching directory names under /sites to see which settings file to use. If it doesn't find a matching directory name, it will use /sites/default/settings.php file.

I'll repeat this again - those subdirectories are not web addressable and don't handle any incoming requests (there is no web server configuration for those directories). They are only used internally by Drupal (not the web server) to match the incoming url to a set of settings.

When it comes down to it all multisite is is a way for Drupal to adapt itself to the incoming requests URL. How it adapts depends on what is in each settings.php file - it could be different database connection string or some overrides to site wide variables etc.

And I'll repeat this again - the only web addressable thing in a Drupal is the root index.php file. If you really want to see that in action - turn off clean urls. The urls are all /index.php?q=node/3 or /index.php?q=taxonomy/term/5 or /index.php?q=admin/build/modules etc etc - everything is handled by index.php, and the request path itself is just an HTTP GET parameter sent to index.php.

Every request has to come through index.php - so setting up multisite is all about getting your webserver (via virtual hosts for hostnames or symlinks for subdirectories etc) to use the main index.php file for all your different multisite urls. If your webserver isn't sending the request to index.php Drupal won't be able handle it.

Stage 1 is sending every sites url to index.php (ie webserver config via virtual hosts, symlinks etc). Stage 2 is setting up the different configurations (ie inside /sites subdirectories) inside Drupal. The two stages are separate - if you find yourself trying to use web server stuff (stage 1) in your /sites directory (stage 2) you're doing the wrong thing.

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Cheers
Anton