Linux – How to access http://localhost on the host operating system if the server is in a virtual machine

Vista does not come with an SMTP server like Windows XP did.

I ran into a similar issue when I switched my development environment to Vista. So, you have to install an SMTP server.

There are many to choose from, but I chose Free SMTP Server to handle development needs.

In general, messing with the ports that your operating system is using just seems like a bad idea. You’ll end up with weird network issues like when trying to print.

In addition, for me having two web servers (IIS running locally for .NET projects) listening on different ports was important.

The best situation was to simply change the IP Port that Apache listens on (the default is port 80, which is the standard for all web traffic).

I changed mine to port 8666 (but it could be anything above 1024). I did the following:

1. Locate the httpd.conf file in the following directory

   [install directory]\xampp\apache\conf

   (mine was in, C:\xampp\apache\conf)

2. Find the line that says, "Listen 80"

3. Change it to "Listen 8666"
4. Save and Close the file
5. Start or restart the Apache service in the XAMPP control panel.

Life should be good.

The only catch to this method is that you can’t just go to http://localhost/xampp any more. You have to tell your browser which port specifically to use (it will by default use 80), so you will have to use http://localhost:8666/xampp/ (the port is designated by the colon and then the number).

The cool thing is I can run http://localhost:8666 to run Apache and http://localhost:8616 to run my local IIS for .NET projects.

Note: XAMPP install path must NOT have special characters in it. Spaces are allowed, parentheses are NOT allowed. Other special characters have to be tested. Apache will not start if the XAMPP install path contains special characters such as parentheses.