I’ve been using Passenger for my Rails projects for the past year. When it comes to testing my Rails apps for browser compatibility I like to use crossover for ie6 (on OSX), and Windows 7 for ie7 and ie8 using Internet Explorers Developer Tools. I run Windows 7 using VMWare.

When I need to test an app that’s using Passenger in VMWare in the past I’ve updated my hosts file (/Windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts) with my current IP address. This has become a pain, and time consuming.

The solution since we can not use 127.0.0.1 for a hostname. Run this command in your Terminal “ifconfig vmnet8” and grab the ip address next to inet. Take this ip address and update your hosts file on your Windows VM. Don’t forget to copy your hosts file from your Mac to the Windows hosts file.