access localhost from virtual machine

[virtualuk]

I'm running Kubuntu 9.10 with VirtualBox 3.0.12. I also have apache server installed with connections limited to localhost only for development purposes. I've installed WinXP in a Virtual Machine so that I can test web sites in IE but I can't connect to the local server. Typing in http://localhost into IE in the virtual machine results in the error message below. How can I access my local server from within a virtual machine?

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

What you can try:
•It appears you are connected to the Internet, but you might want to try to reconnect to the Internet.
•Retype the address.
•Go back to the previous page.
•Most likely causes:

•You are not connected to the Internet.
•The website is encountering problems.
•There might be a typing error in the address.

[Perryg]

OK every computer in the world has localhost and it always points to 127.0.0.1 so it will only look on its own OS.
If you have the guest set to host-only then the other guest set to host-only you will get an ip address and can use that to access the web server.

[virtualuk]

You mentioned "guest" twice in your response so I thought I should clarify my original post. I only have 1 guest OS installed. My host machine is Kubuntu which I have installed VirtualBox and Apache server onto. I need to connect from a WinXP guest OS to localhost on my host OS. Is there a default ip address that can be used from within a guest OS that will automatically point to the host OS?

[Perryg]

On the linux box type ifconfig -a in a terminal it will show you an address of 192.168.56.X this is the host-only address
then in the Windows command window type ipconfig /all. It too should have a 192.168.56.X address.

This assumes you setup the network settings of the guest to use host-only.
If you set it to use NAT then you would need to add a second adapter in the guest set to host-only to be able to talk between the host and the guest.