Macos – localhost not working on OS X Yosemite

localhostmacos

I have my Mac's local apache server running and when I visit localhost I get the standard "It Works" page. The "It works" page was cached – it is in fact broken the same as 127.0.0.1. When I visit 127.0.0.1 however chrome gives me Error code: ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED. So I ran a telnet. Result:

harryg$ telnet localhost 80
Trying ::1...
telnet: connect to address ::1: Connection refused
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
Trying fe80::1...
telnet: connect to address fe80::1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

But scutil gives this:

harryg$ scutil -r localhost
Reachable,Local Address,Directly Reachable Address

Any idea why it isn't working? Is apache listening on some different port? If so how do I check? I have some local vhosts which should be accessible by some local .dev virtual hosts that I've added to my hosts file. E.g. 127.0.0.1 home.dev but they too give the error above.

Edit

It seems nothing is listening on port 80. When I run sudo lsof -iTCP:80 -sTCP:LISTEN I get no output. Apache seems to be running though – I have run apachectl restart` many times.

Best Answer

Check your Apache config with this command:

sudo apachectl -t

This tests the config files and tells you if there's an error. Running sudo apachectl start does not output config file syntax errors to the logs for some reason.

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