diff --git a/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py b/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
index 01a06fb8561..9364b3d7c4c 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_urllib2.py
@@ -679,7 +679,7 @@ def test_file(self):
                 try:
                     data = r.read()
                     headers = r.info()
-                    newurl = r.geturl()
+                    respurl = r.geturl()
                 finally:
                     r.close()
                 stats = os.stat(TESTFN)
@@ -690,6 +690,7 @@ def test_file(self):
             self.assertEqual(headers["Content-type"], "text/plain")
             self.assertEqual(headers["Content-length"], "13")
             self.assertEqual(headers["Last-modified"], modified)
+            self.assertEqual(respurl, url)
 
         for url in [
             "file://localhost:80%s" % urlpath,
diff --git a/Lib/urllib2.py b/Lib/urllib2.py
index 122f777ce4a..84f78333e99 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib2.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib2.py
@@ -1291,7 +1291,7 @@ def open_local_file(self, req):
             if not host or \
                 (not port and socket.gethostbyname(host) in self.get_names()):
                 return addinfourl(open(localfile, 'rb'),
-                                  headers, 'file:'+file)
+                                  headers, 'file://'+ host + file)
         except OSError, msg:
             # urllib2 users shouldn't expect OSErrors coming from urlopen()
             raise URLError(msg)