Zilkey

I recently discovered how easy it is to view my local development websites on multiple OS’s using VMWare. I use this primarily to see how awful my apps look in IE. Here’s how you can do it too:

Step1: Get Setup (the expensive part)

1. Buy a mac
2. Buy VMWare Fusion
3. Buy Windows. Yes – if you want to run IE6 and IE7 you’ll have to buy two licenses. Yes, it will take you several hours of frustration and several hours on the phone with MicroSoft to get your licenses installed with VMWare.
4. Download a few real OS’s and add them as virtual machines

Step 2: Find your network address

When you installed VMWare, it configured all of the necessary IP addresses for you. To find out what they are, open Terminal and type:

ifconfig

You’ll see something like:

lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
    inet6 fdd3:5091:e6df:4c3d:21b:63ff:feab:d72e prefixlen 128 
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether 00:1b:63:ab:d7:2e 
    media: autoselect status: inactive
    supported media: autoselect 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,flow-control> 100baseTX <half-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control> 1000baseT <full-duplex> 1000baseT <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control> none
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet6 fe80::21c:b3ff:fe7c:916e%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5 
    inet6 2002:4452:63ee::21c:b3ff:fe7c:916e prefixlen 64 autoconf 
    inet 10.0.1.199 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
    ether 00:1c:b3:7c:91:6e 
    media: autoselect status: active
    supported media: autoselect
fw0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 4078
    lladdr 00:1d:4f:ff:fe:73:a1:ba 
    media: autoselect <full-duplex> status: inactive
    supported media: autoselect <full-duplex>
vmnet8: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet 172.16.192.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.192.255
    ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08 
vmnet1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet 172.16.43.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.43.255
    ether 00:50:56:c0:00:01 

Notice the last entry, vmnet1 – the inet address listed there is the address that all of your virtual machines can use to access your localhost. In my case, this is 172.16.43.1

Let’s say you have a local rails app running on http://localhost:3000/ – to access that app from anywhere (your mac or any or your virtual machines) just type http://172.16.43.1:3000/ in your browser.

Step 3

Just kidding ;->

References

• http://www.lunenburg.org/wade/articles/2007/12/11/theres-no-place-like-lo0/