Subdomain redirect to WWW

Question

I have the domain example.com and the test.example.com running on apache server. For some reason when I try to visit test.example it is redirected to www.test.example and by consequence a Server not found error is displayed in the browser. Both .htaccess (root and subdomain folder) files are empty.

Additional facts

I have another subdomain xyz.example.com pointed to public_html/xyz directory with some content inside (index.html with "hello world message") and it works fine if I use xyz.example.com instead of www.xyz.example.com. So, can you help me to point to the right direction in order. I have a vps and I am able to change any file if is required.

Below you can find my virtual host configuration.

<VirtualHost xx.xxx.xxx:80>
    ServerName test.example.com
    ServerAlias www.test.example.com
    DocumentRoot /home/example/public_html/test
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    UseCanonicalName Off
    CustomLog /usr/local/apache/domlogs/test.example.com combined
    CustomLog /usr/local/apache/domlogs/test.example.com-bytes_log "%{%s}t %I  .\n%{%s}t %O ."

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/example/public_html/test/cgi-bin/

    # To customize this VirtualHost use an include file at the following location
    # Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/example/test.example.com/*.conf"

</VirtualHost>

Answer 1

The issue here will be the ServerAlias directive. Duplicating vhost files from other sites can be an issue as you don't need to have all those directives. The bare bones vhost file you need is...

<VirtualHost xx.xxx.xxx:80>
    ServerName test.example.com
    DocumentRoot /home/example/public_html/test
</VirtualHost>

Everything else in the vhost is additional directives to add if you need them, such as custom log locations, alias records, etc.