First, thanks for your quick reply. I suspected there was no “magic” in
Apache to accomplish my task. My concern is the fact that the inclusion
of configure.php is embedded in the application system, which by-the-way
is . . .Joomla. Aside from being a totally php based application (there
are no executable binaries, etc.), the Joomla people will tell you that
an “instance” of Joomla does not support multiple domains. In my
opinion, this is a serious design oversight by omission. What is
advertised as a major leading CMS, can only support one domain. In
other words, Joomla is designed with only the “bed-room blogger” or
“mom-and-pop cupcake bakery” in mind.
If your installation is to serve multiple domains, for example a
corporate headquarters with dozens of branch offices where each branch
is semi-autonomous and requires a separate MySQL database, then this can
get ugly. Each instance of the Joomla core requires approximately 58MB,
not including the MySQL database tables. The latter regarding the DB
tables is OK because we want to keep the data segregated . . .easier to
backup and restore; however, if you are serving dozens of branch domains
(virtual hosts) where each branch requires a separate instance of the
Joomla core system, the system objects are redundant . . .parallel
systems . . .each requiring individual attention every time a new “ball
is rolled down the ally”. This is where a symbolic link to this common
core would be/is practical. Problem is that a configuration file,
./joomla3/configure.php, is embedded within the core objects.
This configuration file contains about fifty-eight parameters that
include arguments such as
public $sitename = 'Corporate Home Office';
public $db = 'CorpHQ';
public $dbprefix = 'joom_';
Alternately, another virtual host could be:
public $sitename = 'Little Rock Branch';
public $db = 'LIT';
public $dbprefix = 'joom_';
Why is Joomla designed this way? Seems that yet another MySQL DB table
could have been designed into the system and the configuration extracted
from the same, rather than reading the content of a configuration.php
file. Regardless, this configuration file customizes each instance
(virtual host). Were there a way (method) to create this custom
configuration, ./parent(vhost)/configuration.php and override the
./parent/child(joomla3 default instance)/configuration.php); then Joomla
could easily support multiple domains with only one instance of the core
code. (By the way, the MySQL DB table schema exists in
./installation/sql/mysql/joomla.sql. Execute [ mysql> ./ joomla.sql ]
to generate the tables; then use phpMyAdmin to change the database names
as appropriate.)
Which brings us full-circle to why the need to override the
configuration file. I have read the Linux document,
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.txt
(BTW, I’m working with FreeBSD v10.2), and yes, the “upper” and “lower”
directory scenario does sound analogous to the OS/400 override
concepts. Also keep in mind that OS/400 is not a hierarchal file system
but rather what is described as single level storage. Analogous to
directories are libraries, but all on the same level – think of taking a
roll of pennies(libraries) and scattering them over the shop floor . .
.all at the same level. Paths or search orders to these libraries are
arranged in library lists. These lists can be defined by user profiles,
job descriptions, etc. Another way to avoid the override action is to
simply rearrange the library list. For example, given the following
library list:
production-lib
corp-office
branch-1
branch-2
test-lib
programmer-john-lib
. . .should programmer John want to test his version of a configuration
file, then he simply moves his library containing the file to the top of
(or up) the list. . . .sweet!
My apologies if this is a little wordy; I still don’t have a solution,
but perhaps this will help others understand the Joomla task and problems.
Thanks again,
Ron W.
On 3/13/2016 12:57 AM, Marat Khalili wrote:
If you want client requests to http://your.site/config.php be served
by ./parent/config.php , then the answer is yes -- I'd start with
mod_rewrite for instance. If config.php is invoked by PHP, not by
Apache, then you cannot fix it using Apache features -- you really
need to change that symbolic link or PHP configuration or something in
the system. Actual analogue of OVRDBF as I understand it in Linux is
OverlayFS, but it's overkill for your task.
--
With Best Regards,
Marat Khalili
On 12/03/2016 23:14, Ron Wingfield wrote:
I don’t know if and how this can be accomplished.
Scenario:
Two directories, parent and child.
parent is in a virtual host “container”.
child is a symbolic link to an application default core distribution
directory (php objects).
./parent/child contains a default config.php file.
./parent contains a custom config.php file.
DocumentRoot points to ./parent/child.
Can the various features of Apache, .htaccess, <Directory>, <File>,
Alias, etc., be configured to effectively override ./child/config.php
to ./parent/config.php?
In other words, I want to substitute the custom file for the default
version. In IBM OS/400 world, this can be easily accomplished with
the Override with DataBase File command . . .something like:
OVRDBF FILE(child/config.php) TOFILE(parent/config.php)
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