We start by setting up the paths to our new domin. It might be a good idea to put new domains in the home directory. Though you are free to put them where you want.

I personally use the home directory, and will base my short guide on doing so.

Start by creating the domain as a folder in the home directory.

# mkdir /home/example.tld

Next give apache owner rights over the folder

# chown apache:apache /home/example.tld

Change the directory to the example.tld.

# cd /home/example.tld

We want to make two directories, one to store our web page to example.tld, and one to store subdomains.

# mkdir htdocs
# mkdir subdomains
# chown apache:apache htdocs
# chown apache:apache subdomains

Since we are going to add one subdomain, we will add our subdomain “admin” to our subdomain folder.

# mkdir subdomains/admin
# chown apache:apache subdomains/admin

And at last create a htdocs folder in the admin subdomain folder.

# mkdir subdomins/admin/htdocs
# chown  apache:apache subdomains/admin/htdocs

We are almoust ready now. Put your web page files into the htdocs folders, or just create a dummy index.html with “Hello World” or something. If you get many folders and files and need th change the owner on all you can run this command to change all files and dirs to the apache user and group.

# chown apache:apache -R /home/example.tld

Now we are ready to edit the apache configuration.

Open the configuration file (you need to be root or have sudo privileges)

#vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Go to the end of the configuration file and go into insert mode. Add two virtual hosts in this file at the far end.

First Add the virtual host if it’s not present

NameVirtualHost *:80

Then add the virtual host for the main domain, example.tld

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /home/example.tld/htdocs
ServerName example.tld
<Directory “/home/example.tld/htdocs”>
allow from all
Options +Indexes
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Next add the virtual host for the subdomain. Repeat this one for every subdomain you want

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /home/example.tld/subdomains/admin/htdocs
ServerName admin.example.tld
<Directory “/home/example.tld/subdomains/admin/htdocs”>
allow from all
Options +Indexes
</Directory>

Save the configuration and restart apache

# service httpd restart

Finished!

I know subdomains can be setup as wildcards, CNAME and A-records, but right now I use A-record for the subdomains. To just get it going we will consentrate of just getting it working with the following configuration.

Domain: example.tld
Subdomains: mail, admin, mysql
IP: 1.2.3.4

Now we will start by adding the domain to the named.conf – Though it might not be present at this path you might need to search for it. (Using for example webmin would help you show all configuration files).

# vi /etc/named.conf

Add a new zone to named.conf

zone “example.tld” {
type master;
file “/var/named/example.tld.hosts”;
};

Save the configuration

Push escape, then : x

The next step is creating the DNS records.  Add a new file to bind.

# vi /var/named/example.tld.hosts

In this file you will create your DNS-records.

$ttl 15m ; TTL Might be smart to have at 15 minutes until your conf are ok
example.tld. IN SOA ns.example.tld. user.example.tld. (
123456789 ;An unique number
86000 ;Refresh rate in seconds
7200 ;Update Retry in seconds
3600000 ;Expiry in seconds
600 ; minimum in seconds
)

example.tld. IN NS ns.example.tld.
example.tld. IN A 1.2.3.4
www.example.tld. IN CNAME example.tld
mail IN A 1.2.3.4
admin IN A 1.2.3.4
mysql IN A 1.2.3.4
mail.example.tld. IN MX 1 example.tld.

Now save the file and restart BIND

# service bind restart

The installation of trac is an easy if you got the correct access. Anyhow will I not go through the install process in this guide, but you can find a tutorial on doing that at the trac home page.

When you got plesk installed you should have  you subdomains as virtual hosts. This should be installed automatic from your plesk admin panel.

Lets say your site is named example.tld and your subdomain named trac.

Site name: example.tld
Sub domain: trac

Now log into a SSH client and navigate to the trac subdomain folder

# cd /var/www/vhosts/example.tld/subdomains/trac/

As we just can’t put the project files from trac into the htdocs folder just make a project in this folder so you got a sub folder “project” in the trac directory (or another place).

When you’ve got your project folder in place you are ready to setup the trac for your subdomain. In the subdomain folder locate the folder “conf”. This folder will locate a file that extend the apache configuration, vhost.conf – If not, vi will create it

#vi vhost.conf

Not much configuration necessary here. Add this information (replace the example.tld and path with your environment. And myproject with your project folder for the www-path)

<Location /myproject>
SetHandler mod_python
PythonInterpreter main_interpreter
PythonHandler trac.web.modpython_frontend
PythonOption TracEnv /var/www/vhosts/example.tld/subdomains/trac/project/
PythonOption TracUriRoot /myproject
SetEnv PYTHON_EGG_CACHE /tmp/cache
</Location>

Now restart the apache web server and you are good to go

#service httpd restart
or
#/etc/rc.d/httpd (or apache) restart