Ubuntu – redirect to 404 wildcard subdomain

apache-2.2debianmod-rewriteUbuntuwildcard

I setup a wildcard A record on my domain registrar. Now if a user access a missing subdomain on my domain, they will be redirected to the homepage. Currently my initial setup was this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com$1 [R]
  DocumentRoot /var/www
  <Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
  </Directory>
  # more below...
</VirtualHost>

Any wildcard subdomain or if my IP is entered via URL will redirect to the homepage. Can I do something about this that will redirect (HTTP redirect perhaps) the wildcard subdomains to 404 page instead of to homepage?

Best Answer

Disable the RewriteEngine, and specify an empty directory as the DocumentRoot:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
  DocumentRoot /var/www/empty-directory-that-i-just-created
  # more below...
</VirtualHost>

Since this VirtualHost uses an empty directory as DocumentRoot, Apache won't be able to fulfill any requests; it'll return 404s for all of them.

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