httpd.conf

On Debian you will find the configuratoin file for apache under
the /etc/apache/ directory.

#
# BindAddress: You can support virtual hosts with this option. This directive
# is used to tell the server which IP address to listen to. It can either
# contain "*", an IP address, or a fully qualified Internet domain name.
# See also the  and Listen directives.
#
BindAddress 192.168.2.1

This setting is required to protect our server from those pesky internet script kiddies who will abuse our not so secure CGI scripts given the slightest opportunity. By binding the server to the internal network address only, we make the CGI scripts accessible from the internal network only. A side effect is that if you are logged on to the server and try to access the web services using http://localhost/ as your URL it will fail. Localhost maps to 127.0.0.1 and we are only listening on 192.168.2.1. Using the correct number in place of localhost will work, or also using a name mapped to that number with /etc/hosts or bind. TODO - serveroot, servername