Why can't I share over the local network?

I did try clicking on "Apply Changes," nothing happened.

Output form the Console app:

7/20/09 10:16:38 PM XAMPP Control[7178] Remove 10
7/20/09 10:16:45 PM VirtualHostX[7413] port = 9000
7/20/09 10:16:45 PM VirtualHostX[7413] port = 9000
7/20/09 10:16:47 PM [0x0-0x151151].com.clickontyler.virtualhostx[7413] /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin/apachectl: line 70: ulimit: open files: cannot modify limit: Invalid argument
7/20/09 10:16:47 PM [0x0-0x151151].com.clickontyler.virtualhostx[7413] [Mon Jul 20 22:16:47 2009] [error] VirtualHost *:80 -- mixing * ports and non-* ports with a NameVirtualHost address is not supported, proceeding with undefined results
7/20/09 10:16:47 PM [0x0-0x151151].com.clickontyler.virtualhostx[7413] [Mon Jul 20 22:16:47 2009] [error] VirtualHost *:80 -- mixing * ports and non-* ports with a NameVirtualHost address is not supported, proceeding with undefined results
7/20/09 10:16:47 PM [0x0-0x151151].com.clickontyler.virtualhostx[7413] [Mon Jul 20 22:16:47 2009] [error] VirtualHost *:9000 -- mixing * ports and non-* ports with a NameVirtualHost address is not supported, proceeding with undefined results
7/20/09 10:16:47 PM [0x0-0x151151].com.clickontyler.virtualhostx[7413] [Mon Jul 20 22:16:47 2009] [error] VirtualHost *:80 -- mixing * ports and non-* ports with a NameVirtualHost address is not supported, proceeding with undefined results
7/20/09 10:16:47 PM [0x0-0x151151].com.clickontyler.virtualhostx[7413] [Mon Jul 20 22:16:47 2009] [error] VirtualHost *:80 -- mixing * ports and non-* ports with a NameVirtualHost address is not supported, proceeding with undefined results
7/20/09 10:16:49 PM XAMPP Control[7178] Remove 7581

If I'm not mistaken, you do need some sort of DNS on your local network to point the computers to one another.. otherwise Computer A won't know that http://testsite.site/ is on Computer B. Yes?

As far as I know, Bonjour simply announces the existence of the service to other machines on the local network.

My assumption is that VHX is designed to work in the same way that Bonjour is described within Safari's help: "To include the home pages of any Bonjour devices located near you, such as printers or other computers, select this checkbox."

When "Share over local network" is on, I can "see" the website link from Safari's Bonjour menu but selecting the link reveals a "Safari can’t open the page “http://username.local.:9004/” because Safari can’t connect to the server “ username.local.”." error. I also receive the same "can't open the page" alert on the originating Mac.

Just for fun, I installed VHX and XAMPP on another Mac. I also turned on the "Share over local network." The results were a bit different... Turning on the sharing option allowed me to see the website on the local computer, which I can not do on my other computer. Sharing with another computer, however, still did not work. The sharing error was also different... I received a "Forbidden" page vs. a "can't open the page."

The only difference between these two computers is that I had at one time manually edited my virtual hosts. I should state that prior to using VHX I installed a fresh copy of XAMPP I also reverted my hosts file before using VHX.

Hopefully my backup settings that I sent reveal something.. I can send them from my other computer if you want a comparison.

Update (using VHX 2.0.4)

1. I can now turn on "Sharing over local network" and still see my sites on the local Mac.

2. Still can not view the sites using Bonjour (a server not found page appears). I also noticed that the sites only show up in Bonjour while VHX is running.

I am able to go to http://username.local/ and have the XAMPP index page appear so I it looks like my issue has to do with the port numbers.

Fantastic! Will look forward to the screencast.

Regarding my previous post. I did notice that when Sharing over local network is on, VHX says that the server is running but XAMPP says that Apache is not running and on attempt to turn on it stalls and then turns off.

Any update to this issue? It might help to see that screencast. I'm having problems trying to find my sites from computer "B" when the sharing option is turned on computer "A." I made sure I clicked "apply changes" after turning on sharing.

I think I figured it out. I found something that said I needed to have VHX actually open and running on the machine that is sharing the host. Once I did that, it showed up in Bonjour as a bookmark and I was able to double-click it to see my site.

The more interesting question now would be, if you're running VMWare Fusion and want to test your site on Windows, what's the best way to be able to see your sites over the network? (this assumes you've installed BonjourFoxy for Firefox and Bonjour's IE plugin). I assume this would involve modifying the hosts file on Windows?

The tutorial you pointed out is great but seems geared to someone who is running VMware Fusion on the machine they're developing from but my scenario is slightly different:

• Computer "A" is an iMac and the main computer that I am building sites on. It has a G5 processor and cannot run VMware Fusion. I run MAMP, VHX on the machine, and I have sharing turned on in VHX.


• Computer "B" is a Macbook Pro with an Intel processor and has VMware Fusion installed to run Windows XP. It is on my network via wi-fi. I'm using it to test stuff in IE.

As mentioned in my last post, I'm now able to see sites over the network on computer "B" in Safari and Firefox (with BonjourFoxy) within the Mac OS. When I go over to Fusion from this computer though (again, I'm on the network via wi-fi) and try and access the sites in IE (with Bonjour plugin) or Firefox (with BonjourFoxy), nothing comes up in either browser.

I'm also a little confused as to how sharing over local network should function. I was about to set up Windows via VMware Fusion by editing the hosts file. Would I be right thinking that I would no longer need to do this if I enabled local network sharing?

Once I enabled sharing of the virtual hosts I wanted to access, they were appearing fine in Safari and also Firefox and IE via their extensions but all seemed to point in the direction of "Aarons-15-MacBook-Pro.local.:9002" - this led me to the server root, but I couldn't access any of my virtual hosts through Windows on VMware Fusion.

I'm using MAMP with VirtualHostX, would this cause any problems at all over using the default Apache installation of OS X?

Have I misunderstood the purpose of sharing over local network or, more likely, done something wrong?

I look forward to the screencast, it might clear a few things up.

Thanks for any help!

Ah, that's cleared things up, thanks.

As WordPress just loves to hardcode the domain name into everything it touches, I think I'll still need to edit the hosts file manually on Windows for WP testing, but for everything else this should be great. I'm hunting for a plugin to stop WordPress doing it, but haven't found anything so far (I haven't looked too hard, mind).

Setting the WordPress address to the one used when testing on the Windows machine, in my case, "http://aarons-macbook-pro.local.:9001" worked fine, effectively using the "ugly" url for testing on both machines. This should work fine for me.