How to disable all apache virtual hosts?

Question

I'm writing a shell script to do some web server configuration. I need to disable all currently active virtual hosts. a2dissite doesn't accept multiple arguments, so I can't do

a2dissite `ls /etc/apache2/sites-enabled`

Should I use find? Is it safe to manually delete the symlinks in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled?

Answer 1

you can edit the httpd.conf and delete the include line for the virtual hosts (at the bottom of the file)

Answer 2

You can just delete the symlinks, or move the entire directory away. There is no special database or other metadata besides those links.

Answer 3

Is your script Debian only? If so, you can safely delete all the symlinks in sites-enabled, that will work as long as all sites have been written correctly, in the sites-available directory.

For example:

 find /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ -type l -exec rm -i "{}" \;

will protect you against someone who has actually written a file instead of a symlink in that directory.

(remove the -i from rm for an automatic script, of course)

Answer 4

I never use 'a2dissite ' and always delete and create the links in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled manually so yes, I'd say it's pretty safe.

Answer 5

Apparently, you can just install the latest Ubuntu ;)

Answer 6

After a little more research, I found out that a2dissite is just a shell script, and it basically just calls rm. So, like other responses, I agree that it is safe to do

rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*

Answer 7

Another option would be to remove the read permissions on the directory (or files on it) - if Apache can't open the files, it should ignore them, IIRC.