vboxwebsrv host default is NOT localhost as claimed => fixed in SVN

[claudio_]

vboxwebsrv claims in its help and in the documentation, that if the option -H is not supplied that it will then bind to localhost. That is not true at least for version 3.1.2 on OS X 10.6.2. As you can see below it will bind to all interfaces if -H is not supplied and only when -H localhost is supplied then it will bind to localhost only.

$ vboxwebsrv --help Sun VirtualBox Webservice Version 3.1.2 (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Usage: vboxwebsrv [options]

Supported options (default values in brackets): --help, -h: Print this help message and exit. --background, -b: Run in background (daemon mode). --host, -H: The host to bind to (localhost). --port, -p: The port to bind to (18083). --timeout, -t: Session timeout in seconds; 0 = disable timeouts (300). --check-interval, -i: Frequency of timeout checks in seconds (5). --verbose, -v: Be verbose. --logfile, -F: Name of file to write log to (no file).

$ vboxwebsrv & [1] 2030

Sun VirtualBox Webservice Version 3.1.2 (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Socket connection successful: host = default (localhost), port = 18083, master socket = 7

$ netstat -an | grep 18083 tcp4 0 0 *.18083 *.* LISTEN

$ kill %1

$ vboxwebsrv -H localhost & [2] 2042 [1] Terminated vboxwebsrv

Sun VirtualBox Webservice Version 3.1.2 (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Socket connection successful: host = localhost, port = 18083, master socket = 7

$ netstat -an | grep 18083 tcp4 0 0 127.0.0.1.18083 *.* LISTEN

[klaus]

Found time to look into this issue, and with VirtualBox 4.0.2 this will be fixed (in the sense as it'll behave as documented, using the safe default of listening only on localhost).