Addressing localhost from a VirtualBox virtual machine

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/

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.

Not being able to re-direct requests to localhost in the VM to the host's localhost is now baked in to Windows (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/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

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

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.

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<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,AV> 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<PERFORMNUD,DAD> media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control>) 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/