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Re: [greenstone-users] XP weirdness and localhost

From John R. McPherson
DateWed, 29 Oct 2003 11:01:35 +1300
Subject Re: [greenstone-users] XP weirdness and localhost
In-Reply-To (sf98fd0f-018-apps-niwi-knaw-nl)
Rene Schrama wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I exported a collection to CD-ROM (on Windows XP) but after
> installation the homepage wouldn't display. I checked for proxies but
> found none. Then I accidentally discovered that Greenstone was trying to
> connect to <computer name> instead of localhost. The computer name was
> JP12 but the host name of the user's PC was JP012. I changed it to match
> the host name (JP012) and voila, problem solved. But if this happens
> after distribution I have no control over it, so it would be nice to be
> able to connect to 127.0.0.1 and avoid the situation altogether. The
> problem is: how do I tell server.exe to connect to 127.0.0.1 (or
> localhost or whatever)??

The windows server uses standard functions in the win32 libraries to
resolve the machine's host name. If this gets the wrong name, then it
is almost certainly a windows client network settings issue.
I think the reasons that "localhost" wasn't used is because:
1) often stand-alone machines can't resolve the name "localhost" to an IP
address, and
2) in a network environment, that url won't work for any machine other than the one that the greenstone server is running on.

I don't think there is a setting anywhere to hard-code a server name into,
unfortunately.

John McPherson