Addressing localhost from a VirtualBox virtual machine

Question

I have a local test development server  HTTP  of course   listening to port 8000   I m working on Linux  so to test the page on Internet nbsp Explorer nbsp 6  7  8  etc  I run a virtual machine using VirtualBox  I also need to see how it look on Firefox in a windows environment  fonts for instance are different    In my real machine  I open the website simply using the URL http   localhost 8000  how do I address this localhost from the virtual machine   Right now my workaround is to use the IP address  Any better ideas

User · Accepted Answer

Googling turned this up  http   data agaric com localhost-from-virtualbox-xp-install-ubuntu  It suggests using IP  http   10 0 2 2  and it worked for me   So  I edited the hosts file  C  windows system32 drivers etc hosts   and added this entry   10 0 2 2   outer   If you re testing on IE8  remember to put http    in the address bar  Just putting the ip directly will not work   For example   http   10 0 2 2 3000

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If you use Virtual Box you can connect Mac OSX  and I think Linux  to your virtual windows machine using one line of code --  I suggest stopping the box before running this in terminal   VBoxManage modifyvm  YOUR VM NAME  --natdnshostresolver1 on  I will note that this is from the Dinghy docs  which I am running  but its a virtual box command so it shouldn t actually care what you use as long as its Virtual Box

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I need to run on localhost  not some weird IP   1  From your Mac terminal  do iconfig -a to find your local IP address  It s probably the last one    en7  flags 8863 lt UP BROADCAST SMART RUNNING SIMPLEX MULTICAST gt  mtu 1500     options 10b lt RXCSUM TXCSUM VLAN HWTAGGING AV gt      ether 38 c9 86 32 0e 69      inet6 fe80  ea 393e a54f 635 en7 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0xe      inet 10 1 5 60 netmask 0xfffffe00 broadcast 10 1 5 255     nd6 options 201 lt PERFORMNUD DAD gt      media  autoselect  1000baseT  lt full-duplex flow-control gt       status  active   e g  10 1 5 60  2  boot up your windows image  start   type cmd to get a terminal  3  notepad c  windows system32 drivers etc hosts  4  add the following line 10 1 5 60 localhost  5  open IE  and the following url should hit the server running on your mac  http   localhost 3000

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I solved by adding a port forwarding in Virtualbox settings under network  Host IP set 127 0 0 1 port   8080  Guest ip   Give any IP for the website   say 10 0 2 5  port   8080 Now from guest machine access http   10 0 2 5 8080 using IE

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check if you can hit your parent machine with  ipconfig   get your ip address   ping  lt ip gt  or telnet  lt ip gt   lt port gt   If you cannot get to the port  try adding a new inbound rule in your parent firewall allowing local ports   I was then able to access http    lt ip gt   lt port gt

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General steps    A common network   add host-only or bridge NIC  configure preferred service to listen on appropriate interface  interface connected to shared NIC  Use IP Port to reach targeted service  use an IP that belong to shared network

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macOS  I m running Virtual Box on macOS  previously OS X   using Virtual Box to test IE on Windows  etc   Go to IE in Virtual Box and access localhost via http   10 0 2 2 for localhost  or http   10 0 2 2 3000 for localhost 3000    I kept Network settings as NAT  no need for bridge as suggested above in my case  There is no need to edit any config files

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MacOS  If you want to set up a windows environment with Virtualbox on a mac  just use the default NAT settings on the adapter  and in your windows VM  go to hosts file and add the following   10 0 2 2       localhost 10 0 2 2       127 0 0 1   Differently from the answers above  it s important to include both lines  otherwise it won t work

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On Windows with a virtual Windows 7 the only thing that worked for me was using NAT and port-forwarding  couldn t get bridged connection running   I found a tutorial here  http   www howtogeek com 122641 how-to-forward-ports-to-a-virtual-machine-and-use-it-as-a-server   scroll down to the part with  Forwarding Ports to a Virtual Machine     With this changes I could reach the xampp website with  http   192 168 xx x 8888 mywebsite  in internet explorer 10 on my virtual machine    I found the IP in XAMPP Control Panel   Netstat   System

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You don t need to change hosts file or any Virtual Box configuration  Keep settings in NAT  Go to your Windows instance and run  cmd  or open cmd exe  Execute command  ipconfig  and get the Default Gateway IP Address  Browse http   10 0 2 2 8080 on Windows IE you will see is the same than your Mac Safari http   localhost 8080  or http   127 0 0 1 8080

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You most likely have your virtual machine   s networking set to NAT   If you set your networking to Bridged you should be able to access your host machine by its hostname   For example  if your hostname is    jsmith-Precision-7510    and you want to open http   localhost 3000   you will be able to view that page at http   jsmith-Precision-7510 3000    To find your hostname  open a terminal console and then run the command hostname   Your hostname will be outputted on the next line   See the VirtualBox documentation for instructions on how to set your networking setttings to Bridged

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In virtual Box as said upper  you can add this line hosts file  10 0 2 2   outer   but to save it  if you don t have administrators right in your VM just move hosts file to desktop  then edit it to add the line 10 0    outer  save the file  and move to its original place

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A combination of a few things eventually got things working on my end   Running a flask server on macosx   In my windows VM I edited the hosts file      Run notepad as administrator open C  windows system32 drivers etc hosts   add this entry  10 0 2 2   outer     Shutdown VM and on my Mac in VirtualBox    Go to  VirtualBox  gt  preferences  gt  Network  gt  Host-only Networks  gt    to add a network vboxnet1   Go to My VM  gt  settings  gt  Network  gt  Adapter 1    Select Enable Network Adapter and set Attached to  to Bridged Adapter      Then set Advanced  gt  Promiscuous Mode  to Allow VMs    Click OK Go to My VM  gt  settings  gt  Network  gt  Adapter 1   Set Attached to  back to NAT      Then I went to Adapter 2   Set Attached to  to Host-only Adapter and select the previous added network vboxnet1       I started my server on my mac  running on 127 0 0 1 5000 and this was now accessible on my vm at http   10 0 2 2 5000    Man what a nightmare to test on IE on mac  How is there not a simpler way

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I found that 10 0 2 2  lt port gt  works  but only if Promiscuous Mode is set correctly   After installing my VM  I went to Settings   Network   Adapter 1   NAT is set by default  and the Promiscuous Mode dropdown is disabled   I switched from NAT to Bridged Adapter  which enabled the Promiscuous Mode dropdown  and then changed the value from  Deny  to  Allow VMs    I then switched back to NAT  which disabled Promiscuous Mode again  but retained the new value   After only this change  I was able to launch my VM and see my host machines localhost  lt port gt  on my VM at 10 0 2 2  lt port gt

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To enable this on OSX I had to do the following    Shut your virtual machine down  Go to VirtualBox Preferences - gt  Network - gt  Host-only Networks - gt  click the     icon  Click OK  Select your box and click the  Settings  icon - gt  Network - gt  Adapter 2 - gt  On the  Attached to   dropdown  select  Host-only Adapter  and your network  vboxnet0  should show up below by default  Click OK  Once you start your box up again  you should be able to access localhost at http   10 0 2 2    You can refer to it by localhost and access other localhosted sites by adding their references to the hosts file  C  windows system32 drivers etc hosts  like the following   10 0 2 2    localhost 10 0 2 2    subdomain localhost

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Actually  user477494 s answer is in principle correct   I ve applied the same logic in other environments  OS nbsp X host - virtual Windows nbsp XP  and that does the trick  I did have to cycle the host LAMP stack to get the IP address and Apache port to resolve  but once I d figured that out  I was laughing

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In Virtual Box   Set your network to Bridge networking Go to Advanced set Promiscuous Mode  Allow All   Now the tricky bit is your localhost  if you are running from Node js set the IP address to 0 0 0 0  then lookup your own IP address  for example cmd ipconfig --  10 0 1 3   Type that address in with the port number  And it will work

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You need to edit your hosts file on your Windows Virtual machine the same way you do for your local host machine   C  WINDOWS system32 drivers etc hosts  And link your virtual hosts to 10 0 2 2  If you are just using localhost then replace  127 0 0 1 localhost with 10 0 2 2 localhost  For example   10 0 2 2 localhost 10 0 2 2 local site1 com 10 0 2 2 local site2 com   This tells your virtual machine to point to your local machine for those domain names

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I had to go into virtualbox and change my network settings to  NAT   After that  I was able to hit localhost running on my host machine from my emulator on virtualbox through http   10 0 2 2 3000

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Get the IP for the machine running Apache  inet addr  in ifconfig  and enter that in the virtual box browser address bar

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Not being able to re-direct requests to localhost in the VM to the host s localhost is now baked in to Windows  https   tools ietf org html rfc6761 section-6 3   including the VM s available at https   developer microsoft com en-us microsoft-edge tools vms    For security reassons Microsoft now prevents host file entries for overriding the address of localhost to anything other than the loopback address   1  So adding a line the VM s host file such as  10 0 2 2 localhost   will be ignored   There are two ways  that I know of  to override this   1  use NETSH to portproxy to the host  netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenaddress 127 0 0 1 listenport 8000 connectaddress 10 0 2 2 connectport 8000    where 10 0 2 2 is the default gateway on the VM and 8000 is the port you want to resolve to on the host    2  Setup IIS to perform Application Request Routing and then rewrite requests for localhost port to the hostIP port  https   docs microsoft com en-us iis extensions configuring-application-request-routing-arr creating-a-forward-proxy-using-application-request-routing

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If you have adapter attached to NAT  nowadays it s better and more elegant solution to set port forwarding to local ports   Settings   Network   Adapter   Advanced   Port forwarding  Just insert new rule and set Host port and Guest port to 80  for http  or 22  for ssh   and so on   Then you can access that machine by entering just http   localhost  You may also want to switch NAT to transparent mode

[localhost] Addressing localhost from a VirtualBox virtual machine

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