I set up a Apache2 on a new Solaris machine on my company's internal (firewalled) network and configured it for name-based virtual hosts.
We don't yet have a domain for the new machine, so I created my own, "lsiden.net", and named the host something like "myhost.lsiden.net" in the httpd.conf <VirtualHost> directive.
Since no such domain is registered, I created the entry "w.x.y.z myhost.lsiden.net" in my /etc/hosts file. (I will delete it when we get a real domain name.)
I can ping myhost.lsiden.net but if I type it in either IE7 or Google Chrome 10, it won't resolve. Is there something that is preventing each browser from looking in the /etc/hosts file?
(In order to access my company's VPN, I have to use the machine that they configured for me which was provisioned with Windows XP. So /etc/hosts is actually something like c:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts, but that shouldn't matter.)
Best Answer
As far as 'why does one work and not the other' one thing to remember is that ping uses a different protocol (icmp) than http (tcp). Can you check firewalls on your Windows host? A lot of VPNs are configured to firewall certain things.
The next step after ping is the old webmaster (I'm dating myself by using that term) tool: telnet.
Can you try:
from your Windows box.
If this doesn't connect, you have connection issues. Possibly a firewall, or something else.
If it does connect, try typing:
ReturnReturn
Which then should show you your page.
I'd flush the system DNS cache if you haven't yet:
Browsers themselves may use a DNS cache. I know Chrome does, couldn't find a way to flush it. There's a Firefox plugin that flushes DNS cache