Debian – how to dump virtual hosts

It doesn't matter what address you use. If the IP address is the same, you could use site3.com and still access site1. The first VirtualHost will be served for all hostnames that don't match any ServerName or ServerAlias. You need to symlink the site2.com.conf file (or use a2ensite) to be able to access it.

Putting entries in the HOSTS file will cause those names to resolve to the loopback IP address and will let you access those virtual hosts by name from the computer where the HOSTS file is located.

If your issue is that you just don't like typing the entries into the HOSTS file you could probably write a simple script to parse your Apache configuration, locate all the virtual host names, and generate a HOSTS file automatically. I've never heard of somebody doing that, but it's certainly possible. (That seems like a lot of work to avoid some typing but, then again, you should see some of the stupid scripts I've written... >smile<)

If you're only going to be accessing those virtual web hosts from one computer I think you're probably best off just using the HOSTS file. As soon as you want to access those hosts from another computer on your LAN you'll find that using the HOSTS file isn't a "scalable" solution. In that case, you'll want to install a DNS server onto a machine on your LAN, configure the computers on the LAN to use that DNS server, and create zones for the domains you'll be hosting in that DNS server. It doesn't sound like that's what you're asking for, but that's the logical "next step" when you graduate to needing access to these virtual web hosts on multiple computers.