Cool! I use MAMP with Headdress as a local hosting environment, works beautifully.
VirtualBox: Open Source Virtualization
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VirtualBox is an Open Source x86 virtualization product available for OS X. Functioning along the lines of Parallels, but free, I’ve recently gotten XP up and running on my Intel based MacBook Pro and have Internet Explorer versions 5-7 open for testing my websites without having to boot up my old PC. In fact, now I can sell my PC ;). VirtualBox is simple, powerful and easy on the eyes. I had XP up and running in 30 minutes, and 27 of that was the actual XP install. I especially recommend this product if you’re a web developer who needs to test websites cross-platform. I’m currently working on figuring out how to approach a localhost test server in a way that will let me access it from both platforms while I’m working. Once I get that down, I’ll let you know how I did it ;). 
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05.14.07 / 4pm
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05.14.07 / 4pm
Yeah, that’s what I’m currently using, but how do you access the localhost:xxxx from a virtualized server?
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05.14.07 / 5pm
You can use your IP instead of localhost: 192.168.1.x:xxxx. This only becomes a problem on django projects, since the django production server only works on the localhost domain, I switch to lighttpd for PC testing in that case.
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05.14.07 / 5pm
Funny, I was doing that on the Windows side, but I never considered using the IP as the root address for the mac side of things as well. On CMS’s where I need to specify a root address for the site, I’d been giving the localhost address. Switching to the IP solves the problem and makes the site accessible to both platforms at the same address. Thanks for the little smack to the head ;).
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05.15.07 / 3am
Also check out Bonjour for Windows, it’s a free download on Apple’s site. It will let you access using your mac’s name in your sharing preferences and appending “.local”. So if your computer is named macbookpro there, just do http://macbookpro.local:XXXX from both and you should be good to go. This also makes it way easier for other computers on the network to get you also.
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05.15.07 / 4am
Looks like a fantastic product. I wonder how it compares to VMware?
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05.15.07 / 10am
to make your pcs get to your sites on your mac, one of the ways I do it is this:
In the apache conf, just create your named virtual servers, so say the virtual server has a ‘domain name’ of ‘mytestproject’
Then in the hosts file of windows computers, located usually in:
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etcChange the following lines
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.1 mytestproject # this should be the ip address of your mac
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhostIf you have apache all set up correctly for the named virtual severs, and its running, you should be able to get to your mac websites from your virtual PCs. At least thats how I do it.
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05.15.07 / 10am
Think that will work with MAMP? I’ll give it a shot…
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05.15.07 / 1pm
Have you tried Parallels? I was wondering how the performance of it and VirtualBox compare.
I actually just set up an old PC with Ubuntu Server over the weekend for this same type of development and testing environment. This allows me to test from any machine on my network and not using up resources with a virtual machine. However, I do not have it set up yet to be as smooth and easy as using MAMP.
- 05.15.07 / 6pm
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08.09.07 / 1pm
There is an option to share folders from the host to virtualbox itself. It’s the folder at the bottom right. After that you need to mount a network share at the location \vboxsvr\FOLDERNAME or something like that.
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