Most Gumstix devices I’ve encounter (Basix and Verdex Pro) come with a built-in Web server known as Boa. If you’ve ever watch the Gumstix boot from a console, you’ll see an error about gethostbyname. Once the Gumstix is up and running, you’ll find no Web server active. And any attempt to issue an /etc/init.d/boa start only results in the same gethostbyname error.

Here’s a simple fix.

Go to the boa.conf file located in /etc/boa/ directory and find the line with ServerName. Simply change what’s there to a name of your choosing, like this example:

# ServerName: the name of this server that should be sent back to
# clients if different than that returned by gethostname + gethostbyname

ServerName www.mygumstix.net

Once the change is made, start the server with: /etc/init.d/boa start

If all goes well, navigate with your browser to the IP address of your Gumstix and you should see the default Gumstix web page!