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macosapachegoogle-chromelocalhostmamp

Chrome on OS X doesn't respect etc/hosts and/or httpd-vhosts.conf localhost subdomains

this is a situation that's been bugging me a lot the past few days. i have a lot of dev environment subdomains set up in my etc/hosts file like so...

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.0.1   sub.localhost
127.0.0.1   another.localhost
127.0.0.1   andanother.localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost

and then specified in my Applications/MAMP/conf/apache/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf file, like so...

NameVirtualHost *:80

NameVirtualHost sub.localhost:80
NameVirtualHost another.localhost:80
NameVirtualHost andanother.localhost:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/Users/johndoe/websites"
ServerName localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost sub.localhost:80>
DocumentRoot "/Users/johndoe/websites/sub"
ServerName sub.localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost another.localhost:80>
DocumentRoot "/Users/johndoe/websites/another"
ServerName another.localhost
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost andanother.localhost:80>
DocumentRoot "/Users/johndoe/websites/andanother"
ServerName andanother.localhost
</VirtualHost>

and just recently they all stopped working in Chrome (Firefox & Safari worked just fine). i started getting 404 errors for all of my localhost subdomains.

  • editing/changing the settings in etc/hosts didn't work
  • editing/changing the settings in my httpd-vhosts.conf file didn't work

i just couldn't figure out why Chrome was not resolving those addresses to those directories on my local machine.

.

Solution

  • after a lot of research (and trial and error) i realized it was a DNS issue. previously, my DNS settings in System Preferences > Network > Advanced... > DNS > DNS Servers were as follows...

    8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
xxx.xxx.xxx.x
xxx.xxx.xxx.x

    that's Google's DNS servers in the first 2 slots and the x's representing my ISP's DNS server addresses. after some searching some people recommended adding my local network's IP address first, as a way of forcing anything on my system to look locally first before going to outside DNS, so i added my network router's address above the others...

    10.0.1.1

    and that didn't quite work either - or it did - but didn't last (honestly can't remember now), but what i tried next actually DID work. i added my machine's localhost (home) address above the local network's address, like so...

    127.0.0.1
10.0.1.1
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
xxx.xxx.xxx.x
xxx.xxx.xxx.x

    .

    and NOW Google Chrome successfully "finds" all of my localhost subdomains.

    i sure hope all of this is helpful for others out there.