Addressing localhost from a VirtualBox virtual machine

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 Explorer 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?

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/

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.

To enable this on OSX I had to do the following:

1. Shut your virtual machine down.
2. Go to VirtualBox Preferences -> Network -> Host-only Networks -> click the "+" icon. Click OK.
3. Select your box and click the "Settings" icon -> Network -> Adapter 2 -> On the "Attached to:" dropdown, select "Host-only Adapter" and your network (vboxnet0) should show up below by default. Click OK.
4. 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

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

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

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.

I found that 10.0.2.2:<port> 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:<port> on my VM at 10.0.2.2:<port>.

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.

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

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.

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 > preferences > Network > Host-only Networks > + to add a network vboxnet1
• Go to My_VM > settings > Network > Adapter 1.
• Select Enable Network Adapter and set Attached to: to Bridged Adapter.
• Then set Advanced > Promiscuous Mode: to Allow VMs.
• Click OK
• Go to My_VM > settings > Network > 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?

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

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.

check if you can hit your parent machine with: ipconfig (get your ip address)

ping <ip> or telnet <ip> <port>

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://<ip>:<port>

In Virtual Box

1. Set your network to Bridge networking
2. 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.

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.

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").

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

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/

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

Actually, user477494's answer is in principle correct.

I've applied the same logic in other environments (OS X host - virtual Windows 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.