Redirect dns or iis?

[The_cobra666]

Hi all,

I'm standing for a situation that needs to be changed to make sure the users can't do anything wrong. Situation:

I've got a helpdesk website running on a webserver (linux) on link: http://192.168.2.11/glpi. Users need to type that adres or use the shortcut on the desktop to visit the helpdesk. That needs to be changed to this situation: if they need to visiti the helpdesk they just typ in: http://helpdesk and are redirected to the correct place aka http://192.168.2.11/glpi.

How would this be done? I've read about forward zone's and hosts but can't really find a sollution.

Greetings from belgium!

//edit: do note I do not want to manualy edit the host file on every client pc. It must happen via a setting on the server.

[ReggieB]

I'd recommend you use DNS to provide the mapping of host name to IP address (you could use WINS, host or lmhost files but the latter are hard to manage, and the former is going obsolete and is really a Windows only solution). If this is a Linux system it may well already have a DNS host record mapping and therefore already have a DNS address. If this is not 'helpdesk', you will have to create a new A host record that maps helpdesk to 192.168.2.11 in the DNS system.

With DNS, the name will not just be the host name, but rather the fully qualified domain name. So if your internal domain is company.local, you would access the server via http://helpdesk.company.local

That will get you to the server. The next step is to ensure that requests to the root get forwarded to the glpi location. Two ways to do that. Either within the web server software (if apache you can use forwarding directives to do this), or via a dummy redirect html page. That is simply a page called index.html that sits in the web root and uses a redirect meta tag to forward users to the correct location:

http://www.google.com/search?q=meta+tag+redirect

However, if these are the only pages being served by this system, it may just be simpler to move the webroot so that it points at the glpi location. You then won't need a redirect.

[The_cobra666]

I'd recommend you use DNS to provide the mapping of host name to IP address (you could use WINS, host or lmhost files but the latter are hard to manage, and the former is going obsolete and is really a Windows only solution). If this is a Linux system it may well already have a DNS host record mapping and therefore already have a DNS address. If this is not 'helpdesk', you will have to create a new A host record that maps helpdesk to 192.168.2.11 in the DNS system.

With DNS, the name will not just be the host name, but rather the fully qualified domain name. So if your internal domain is company.local, you would access the server via http://helpdesk.company.local

That will get you to the server. The next step is to ensure that requests to the root get forwarded to the glpi location. Two ways to do that. Either within the web server software (if apache you can use forwarding directives to do this), or via a dummy redirect html page. That is simply a page called index.html that sits in the web root and uses a redirect meta tag to forward users to the correct location:

http://www.google.com/search?q=meta+tag+redirect

Hi thanks for your information. I had a quess that I would need to redirect it via html or apache.

Ok, the server (linux) does has a name but that's not helpdesk. I've tried to access the hostname of the machine on the network but that pings out. I can only access it via the ip adress.

what your saying is I have to map an ip adres on the dns server from my windows 2003? If so, do you have a good manual to look in? Accessing it trough the full domain name is not a problem :) aslong as I can typ in an adres instead of an ip :)

//edit: nvm found it :) stupid me :D thanks for the information! Problem fixed :)

[ReggieB]

Are you running DNS on the 2003 server (usually a good idea)? If so have a look at this article:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/window....mspx?mfr=true

[The_cobra666]

Are you running DNS on the 2003 server (usually a good idea)? If so have a look at this article:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/window....mspx?mfr=true

Jup there is a dns server running. It was indeed adding a host.

Thanks for the help ;)