Okay...the subject is almost misleading. But not intentionally. Here's the deal.
Don't ask why, but I had to reinstall Apache on my laptop. My laptop is better than my desktop, so I use it as my local development server. I do all my browsing, Eclipse, graphics, etc. on the desktop, though, because of the bigger screen, keyboard, etc.
So I reinstall Apache and all of a sudden, I can't get to the site anymore. (http://local.site.com). Been doing this for months. I haven't changed webroot paths, IPs, nothing but the reinstall. So I'm going crazy and I'm asking all my buddies what could cause this.
One of them suggests the firewall, but I never use it on my laptop since I'm always behind the router. So I sweat and sweat some more, about an hour of this. Finally, I use my old test that I did for testing SMTP servers. From a command line you can run:
telnet www.google.com 80
You get a blank screen, hit enter, escape, whatever and you'll get a bunch of HTML and be returned to the command prompt. So I tried it with local.site.com and got nothing...but "Connecting to....." until it times out. So...clearly port 80 is blocked on either the desktop or the laptop.
On a whim, I pull up the Windows Firewall configuration. Somehow, it got turned on! I never turn it on, therefore never thought to check it.
So, thanks, Tom. Who would of thought! You, obviously.
- Will Belden
October 3, 2007
