For a development box, you can set both the address and hostname to 127.0.0.1. Somewhere I read that OS X drops the ethernet device if there's no physical RJ45 cable and the Airport card (on a PB) can't find a network, and this avoids that problem. It works for me anyway even though
why it does dips below my Tech Knowledge Event Horizon. 😉
But there must be more than one way to do it, since Vinod uses 0.0.0.0 for the address and localhost for hostname -- see this thread.
