Debian / Apache2 on VMWare Player

[nko]

I've downloaded the Debian VMWare Player image from VMWare's community image listings (the netinstall one). Everything seems to work great; I can update apt, download programs with ease, browse the 'net with links2, and do all the other sweet stuff any nice distro lets you do- all under VMWare Player on Windows 2000.

I downloaded nmap and found out that apache2 is serving web pages on port 80 (both on eth0 - 192.168.5.130 - and localhost / loopback). However, trying to browse anything I'm hosting locally (links2 127.0.0.1 or links2 192.168.5.130) always fails. I get no response for a good two minutes, and then a "server timed out" message.

I've never dealt with a Linux firewall (I rely on dedicated hardware to think for me!). Could that be causing me headaches? What else could it be? Again, nmap says http is being server on port 80/tcp. I'm thoroughly stumped.

[je_fro]

Is that the virtual ip address assigned by vmware? What's going on with your network config?

[nko]

192.168.5.130 is what ifconfig says is the address for eth0. For now, I'm mainly just trying to access the server from within the VM itself, using links2 on my virtual Debian machine.

I haven't really thought about accessing the VM from the host machine yet. If I can get this problem hammered out, I imagine that might be my next thread :-)

[nko]

Well, this is on the extreme side of weird.

I installed the system. httpd was running. Couldn't access it.

I changed the apache2.conf file to allow for users to serve pages from public_html and ran "apache2ctl restart". It restarted. Couldn't access it.

I ran "apache2ctl stop". Now it immediately told me that it couldn't find the server (rather than hanging for two minutes).

I ran "apache2ctl start". Everything works. I can even access it from the host machine.

Okay, so problem solved... but I thought the "restart" directive was a little more reliable than that. I've yet to have a painless experience with any web server software.