How to access Virtual Hosts setup on the VM from the Host Machine?

Question

I want to access my virtual hosts (websites) that I've set up in my VirtualBox -> Ubuntu-Server 18. I have apache2 installed and everything is setup.

The host machine (macOS) can presently gain access to the default website of apache2 in the guest (Ubuntu-server) through a Port Forwarding rule I have assigned in the VirtualBox Network Settings:

127.0.0.1:8000 -> 10.0.2.15:80

I've set up a virtual host in my guest machine with the following configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName dropn.taxi
    ServerAdmin admin@dropn.taxi
    DocumentRoot /var/www/dropn.taxi/public_html

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

The DocumentRoot directory mentioned above exists and has the files necessary to serve a basic "Hello World" home page. I've tested it with my apache installed in my local machine as well. The website's not the problem.

But everytime I access localhost:8000 from the local machine, I'm greeted with an Ubnutu-Apache greetings page. Whereas when I try localhost:8000/dropn.taxi , I get a 404 page. I've researched quite a bit and the closest I can get to a solution is what is suggested in this page: Ubuntu Apache2 local virtual hosts url not found

Simply put: How can I access virtual hosts of the guest machine (VM) from the host machine?

Still not specific to my case. Would appreciate any help in this regards.

Answer 1

localhost in the apache2 server is set to point to /var/www/html by default. For the virtual hosts to work properly, the domain name accessing them must be what is defined in the ServerName field.

localhost:8000/dropn.taxi would translate to 127.0.0.1/dropn.taxi in the VM guest. Which means, it is trying to access the /var/www/html/dropn.taxi , which, ultimately does not exist, hence the 404 error.

The solution to this is to add dropn.taxi to the /etc/hosts file in both the Host Machine and the VM. The line would look like: 127.0.0.1 localhost dropn.taxi

While accessing from the Host Machine, we use dropn.taxi:8000 in the browser whereas the port :8000 is not used in the guest machine. This way, whenever accessing the virtual hosts, the domain name accessing them matches the ServerName field and it simply works!