Accessing ASP.NET local server from virtual machine

Question

Don't know if maybe this question belongs on serverfault, but I'll try here first.

I'm running Visual Studio 2010 on my machine, and I want to test my ASP.NET page in IE6. IE6 is running on a virtual machine using Windows XP Mode.

The problem is that I can't access localhost from the virtual machine. I've also tried accessing it via my ip: 123.12.12.123:12121, but that doesn't work either. Is there something I can setup in Visual Studio? Or is the problem most likely with the virtual pc?

Answer 1

The "Cassini" web server provided as part of Visual Studio doesn't support requests from any machine other than the one it's running on. A virtual machine running on that machine is considered to be a different machine for these purposes.

You have twothree options:

1. Deploy your software to IIS running on your development machine (or a.n.other machine).
2. Download WebMatrix, to get hold of a copy of IISExpress, as it's somewhat easier to setup debugging against as opposed to "real" IIS.
3. Have a look at UltiDev Cassini, it's another implementation of the Visual Studio web server. I've never used it so can't comment on quality.

Answer 2

The problem is that the (test) web server that's included won't accept connections from outside. Your virtual machine has its own IP address and is seen as a different machine, just the same as any other physical computer.