Doing some node development on windows. Node programs like to kick out URLs that look like . In Linux (iirc) pasting that url into the browser will be successful. But in Windows, it's a 404. I thought I'd just be able to add:
0.0.0.0 localhost
to my hosts file but that doesn't seem to work. For instance, I have a debugger running on . Works fine. But when I add the above line to my hosts file and try to access I get:
Error 108 (net::ERR_ADDRESS_INVALID): Unknown error.
Node-inspector is a good example:
$ node-inspector info - socket.io started
visit to start debugging Do I just need to manually edit that IP to be equal to localhost when copy/pasting? Or is this a weird difference between Linux and Windows?
How do I get 0.0.0.0 to be equivalent to localhost when browsing urls in Windows 7? Chrome is my 'default' browser.
1 Answer
So, what's happening here is that node is binding to 0.0.0.0 - netspeak for "All interfaces". This includes localhost, any real interfaces you have, and any virtual interfaces you have. It in and of itself generally does not point to an individual interface. (Technically, it points to "This host on this network", but that's ambiguous at best because "this network" is not defined. So 0.0.0.0 is usually understood to point represent the local computer's IP on every network)
Do you need to manually edit that IP when copy/pasting? Yes. If Linux or a specific browser on linux happens to silently correct it to 127.0.0.1... awesome. But as you've found out, that's not a universal thing.
