Accessing the Mac side apache server from Parallels

Hi,

I'm having trouble hitting the apache server running on the mac side from the windows side when not connected to the internet. I have succeeded with this fine when I have a LAN IP address for the Mac side (e.g. 192.168.1.102). The problem comes when I disconnect from my LAN and try to work disconnected from the greater internet. I have tried all of the IP addresses that the Mac side 'ifconfig' shows, but none of them hit paydirt when I try them from the parallels side.

The question:

From Windows/Parallel's perspective, what is the IP address of the Mac when not connected to the internet?

I'd love to figure this out. Any help much appreciated!

Thanks,
Rob

 

You can't...if I understand correctly what you are doing. You have to think of your OSX and Guest OS as two separate machines...unless you are connected to the network neither will get an IP address and you cannot connect through Apache.

I hope I answered your question.

 

Thank you, that does help me to envision what is going on.

So...virtual machines aside for a moment, if I were to simply plug in another computer via an ethernet cable, OSX is smart enough to cross-over the cable if necessary and connect to this other machine. This all happens without any external IP address assigning LAN router involvement. Please help me to understand why the OSX/Windows-Parallels situation is different. Why isn't there an equivalent move to plugging in an ethernet cable to get the OSX "machine" and the Windows-Parallels "machine" to talk to each other without a LAN router handing out addresses.

A thousand thanks!

Rob

 

There is, it's called host-based networking. Just set the virtual machine to host-based networking instead of bridged or shared networking. That will allow the VM to talk with the host directly without being connected to the LAN or the internet. You don't even have to have an active connection up and running.

HTH,

Titetanium

 

Ah, so that's what 'host based networking' is!

Despite that limitation I found what I was looking for in this tutorial:
http://2ni.ch/2006/11/22/setting-up-parallels-and-virtual-hosts-on-your-macbook/#comment-56985

Thank you both for your attention!