mjhjmtu

In my localhost (Apache Server), I have two VirtualHost in port 80 pointing to different directory.

Here is my two conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName localhost
 DocumentRoot /home/myuser/project_1/

 ErrorLog $APACHE_LOG_DIR/error.log
 CustomLog $APACHE_LOG_DIR/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerName project2
 DocumentRoot /home/myuser/project_2/

 ErrorLog $APACHE_LOG_DIR/error.log
 CustomLog $APACHE_LOG_DIR/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

And in my /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.2 project2

Now when I type http://localhost it maps to project_1 directory and for http://project2/ it maps to project_2 directory. Things are fine here but if I type 127.0.1.2 it always maps to first project_1 instead of project_2 directory i.e it maps to localhost instead of project2 url.

Why is this? How I can do such reverse mapping?

In your virtual host configurations, you are using name based virtual hosts as you specify ServerName. This means that a configuration would only load when the "Host" header in the client request matches. The default behavior of Apache when it cannot match the requested host with any configured virtual hosts is to load the first configured virtual host it can find.

There are many options to get the right content, one is to adjust the "Host" header in your request to match the ServerName you are trying to reach. Another would be to add the IP address as a ServerAlias or you could switch to IP based virtual hosts and configure things that way.