You already have a local development environment set up using MAMP (MAMP uses port 8888 so your localhost is accessed at http://localhost:8888 and custom sites, assuming you have set any up, are available at http://whatever:8888).
Naturally you need to test your sites in Internet *barf* Explorer so you have set up a virtual environment to do this. I am using Sun’s fantastic, open source application VirtualBox. The question is, how do you access your local sites from within VirtualBox? Launching IE and going to http://localhost:8888 does not work… hmmm.
Turns out, the address you need to point at is http://10.0.0.2:8888. That will get you to MAMP’s htdocs directory, i.e. your http://localhost:8888!
Now that is useful but it doesn’t get give you access to your custom sites. Here is how you access those!
- Open your Windows host file. It is found here:
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts - Under the bit that says:
127.0.0.1 localhostadd the following (using whatever your actual project is called):10.0.2.2 whatever
That’s it! Now you can visit http://whatever:8888 using IE from within your virtual Windows environment.
#1 by Stefano on March 12, 2010 - 9:50 am
Thank you so much!
#2 by jeremy clarke on April 16, 2010 - 6:39 pm
Fuck yeah! Thanks for the tip man. Exactly what I was looking for. I actually got everything but forgot my stupid :8888!
I tried some other searches before I found this one, so I’ll keyword jam the comment for the sake of others: This works great when using Virtualbox with OSX Mac Hosts files Windows XP.