Cannot redirect to sub-subdomain from subdomain using httpd-vhosts.conf

Question

I'm attempting to setup a local development server where I can simply access any project within a directory E:\\development\\projects\\ and have apache automatically redirect me to the correct subdomain.

However when attempting to redirect to a sub-subdomain ( backend.project01.dev01 ), I simply get a "server unreachable" message.

See my httpd-vhosts.conf for more info:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName dev01
    ServerAlias www.dev01
    DocumentRoot "E:\development\projects"
    ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
    <directory "E:\development\projects">
    </directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName dev01
    ServerAlias *.dev01
    VirtualDocumentRoot "E:\development\projects\%1"
    ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
    <directory "E:\development\projects\%1">
    </directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName dev01
    ServerAlias *.*.dev01
    VirtualDocumentRoot "E:\development\projects\%2"
    ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
    <directory "E:\development\projects\%2">
    </directory>
</VirtualHost>

In a nutshell:

This work: project01.dev01/

This doesn't work: backend.project01.dev01/

Answer 1

So I've found a solution. To match sub-subdomains, you have to match the deepest level first.

Ie: match deepest.sub.domain before sub.domain

The answer in this example is:

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName dev01
    DocumentRoot "E:\development\projects"
    ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
    <directory "E:\development\projects">
    </directory>
</VirtualHost>

## moved this up
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName dev01
    ServerAlias *.*.dev01
    VirtualDocumentRoot "E:\development\projects\%2"
    ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
    <directory "E:\development\projects\%2">
    </directory>
</VirtualHost>

## moved this down
<VirtualHost *:80> 
    ServerName dev01
    ServerAlias *.dev01
    VirtualDocumentRoot "E:\development\projects\%1"
    ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
    <directory "E:\development\projects\%1">
    </directory>
</VirtualHost>

In this example apache will always first attempt to match the *.*.dev01 and if it fails, attempt to match *.dev01 .

Hopefully this will help others in the future.