Running APE Server in a Virtual Machine

I have been trying to set-up an Ajax Push Engine (APE) Server in a virtual machine, and have run into a bit of a snag. The problem is that the APE server cannot be accessed outside of the virtual machine.

Setup:

Guest OS: Ubuntu 10.10 (I believe) with the ape package installed
- IP Address: 192.168.56.1 using a host-only network adapter
- APE Server running on port 6969

If I try wget 127.0.0.1:6969 in the virtual machine, I get a response.

If I try wget 192.168.56.1:6969 from the host OS, I get a Connection Refused message.

If I ping 192.168.56.1, I also get a response.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Solution

I ended up redoing everything from scratch, and it worked, so I must have got it right somehow. For the benefit of others...

To get APE Server running in a virtual machine (in particular, using VirtualBox), you need to do the following:

Setting up the environment

Download and install VirtualBox
Open VirtualBox, and go to File > Preferences, then Network
- Confirm that there exists a host-only network vboxnet0 (if not, create it). Take note of its IPv4 address (192.168.56.1, in my case)
Create a new Ubuntu Virtual Machine
Start the Virtual Machine

Getting the Libraries

Add the PPA for libmysqlclient15off, a pre-requisite for APE Server:

username# gpg --keyserver  hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 1C4CBDCDCD2EFD2A
username# gpg -a --export CD2EFD2A | apt-key add -
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://repo.percona.com/apt maverick main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/percona.list'

Install libmysqlclient15off

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15off

Get and install the latest version of APE server

Edit /etc/network/interfaces, and add the following to the end:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.56.101
    netmask 255.255.255.0

Close the virtual machine and go into its settings. Change the network settings for the first interface to Host-only Adapter

Setting Up APE

Restart the Virtual Machine, and ensure that the APE daemon is running
```
username# ps -ef | grep "aped"
```
If you need to, make changes to /etc/ape/ape.conf

Final Steps

Add the following to your hosts file, or some variation:

192.168.56.101            local.site.com
192.168.56.101            0.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            1.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            2.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            3.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            4.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            5.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            6.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            7.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            8.local.site.com
192.168.56.101            9.local.site.com

Access your new APE server via local.site.com:6969