Force domain name only linux

Question

I have a domain

https://www.example.com

and external ip address of my server

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

I am able to access my domain and ip address which will display the same page of my website

the "ONLY" code in my httpd-vhosts.conf are these:

<virtualhost *:443>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
    DocumentRoot "/mydir/"
    ServerName www.example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/example.com-error.log" 
    CustomLog "logs/example.com-access.log" common
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile "etc/ssl.crt/example.crt"
    SSLCertificateKeyFile "etc/ssl.key/example.key"
</virtualhost>

Now, I want to remove the access to everyone using my external ip address. I want to force visitors using my domain name instead of my external ip. It's all because my website have cloudflare dns and I don't want anyone to access my ip directly.

How to disable direct external ip access ?
Should I disabled all of it ports ?

Answer 1

TLDR: You can't.

The clients will always connect to the server using the IP address. The domain name is translated to the corresponding IP address by a DNS or a hosts file in the client's operating system. You could use a network sniffer like Wireshark to see that all IP packets use IP addresses. Only the HTTP/S content has additional host information like domain name. But routing is done with IP only.

Answer 2

I have solved the issues by modifying httpd-vhosts.conf to

<virtualhost *:443>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
    DocumentRoot "/mydir/"
    ServerName www.example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    ErrorLog "logs/example.com-error.log" 
    CustomLog "logs/example.com-access.log" common
    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile "etc/ssl.crt/example.crt"
    SSLCertificateKeyFile "etc/ssl.key/example.key"
</virtualhost>

<virtualhost *:80>
  ServerName localhost
  Redirect 403 /
  UseCanonicalName Off
  UserDir disabled
</VirtualHost>

<virtualhost *:80>
  ServerName xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  Redirect 403 /
  UseCanonicalName Off
  UserDir disabled
</VirtualHost>

<virtualhost *:443>
  ServerName localhost
  Redirect 403 /
  UseCanonicalName Off
  UserDir disabled
</VirtualHost>

<virtualhost *:443>
  ServerName xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
  Redirect 403 /
  UseCanonicalName Off
  UserDir disabled
</VirtualHost>