problems with firewall in tiger

[nick_harambee]

hi,

i have recently bought an IMAC G5 running tiger 10.4.1 and i am having problems with the firewall. when i go to check the settings in system prefs/sharing, and i select 'firewall' i get the message 'other firewall software is running on your computer. to change the apple firewall settings, turn off the other firewall software'. i have not installed any other firewall, so i have no idea what is causing this. i have tried deleting 'com.apple.sharing.firewall.plist' from library/preferences folder and restarting, but this hasn't solved the problem.

does anyone have any idea what i could try next
?

thanks

nick.

 

[daveL]

hi,

i have recently bought an IMAC G5 running tiger 10.4.1 and i am having problems with the firewall. when i go to check the settings in system prefs/sharing, and i select 'firewall' i get the message 'other firewall software is running on your computer. to change the apple firewall settings, turn off the other firewall software'. i have not installed any other firewall, so i have no idea what is causing this. i have tried deleting 'com.apple.sharing.firewall.plist' from library/preferences folder and restarting, but this hasn't solved the problem.

does anyone have any idea what i could try next
?

thanks

nick.

You're running VPC. When you shut down VPC the message will stop.

 

[nick_harambee]

by VPC do you mean virtual PC as i haven't installed this?

nick

 

[daveL]

by VPC do you mean virtual PC as i haven't installed this?

nick

Sorry, then. That is the error message you get when Virtual PC is running. It's the only time I've ever seen that error. I'm running Tiger and haven't had any firewall issues. Have you tried repairing permission in Disk Utility?

 

[Scottyk9]

Interesting - I had noticed that the OS X firewall would not load up in Panther, and as dave suggested, I thought it was due to Virtual PC (which I HATED... why would I want a windows firewall??). However now under Tiger, OS X firewall works great. I wonder if this is because the virtual switch networking is non-functional under Tiger?

Sorry nick, I don't know why your firewall isn't working. It would be nice if you could find out through OS X exactly what program is running to prevent the firewall from functioning. Does anyone know?

 

[daveL]

Interesting - I had noticed that the OS X firewall would not load up in Panther, and as dave suggested, I thought it was due to Virtual PC (which I HATED... why would I want a windows firewall??). However now under Tiger, OS X firewall works great. I wonder if this is because the virtual switch networking is non-functional under Tiger?

Sorry nick, I don't know why your firewall isn't working. It would be nice if you could find out through OS X exactly what program is running to prevent the firewall from functioning. Does anyone know?

No, it's not virtual switch. I got the error using the default shared network setting. I think the error has something to do with another app/process attaching the network device at the kernel level. I could see a third party VPN client or network intrusion software possibly evoking this error.

 

[Scottyk9]

No, it's not virtual switch. I got the error using the default shared network setting. I think the error has something to do with another app/process attaching the network device at the kernel level. I could see a third party VPN client or network intrusion software possibly evoking this error.

Are you sure? Under Panther, the firewall works fine until I start up VPC with shared networking (although given VPC's warning message in Tiger, I assume some functionality for virtual switch is running). Under Tiger, OS X's firewall works fine regardless of the status of VPC (although virtual switch networking is broken).

It will be interesting to see what happens to OS X's firewall when microsoft fixes VPC.

 

[daveL]

Are you sure? Under Panther, the firewall works fine until I start up VPC with shared networking (although given VPC's warning message in Tiger, I assume some functionality for virtual switch is running). Under Tiger, OS X's firewall works fine regardless of the status of VPC (although virtual switch networking is broken).

It will be interesting to see what happens to OS X's firewall when microsoft fixes VPC.

Sorry, I was responding to the virtual switch bit, not the Tiger bit. My bad. I haven't even tried messing with my firewall under Tiger when VPC was running, so I didn't realize the error no longer comes up.

 

[nick_harambee]

i have now tried various suggestions, but still have the same problem.

when i type 'sudo ipfw list' into terminal i get the following list:

00010 divert 8668 ip from any to any via en1
07010 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 990 in
07020 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 999 in
07030 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 5678 in
07040 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 5679 in
07050 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 25 in
07060 allow tcp from any to any dst-port 110 in
65535 allow ip from any to any

when i type 'sudo ipfw -f flush' either i no longer get the message saying there is another firewall or everything is greyed out and i get the message 'firewall unavailable', but when i restart the iMac i am back where i started with the original message telling me there is another firewall.

the items i have in my library/startupitems folder are:

FreePOPs
M-Audio FireWire Ausio Helper
MissingSyncUSB Daemon
QMaster

i would be grateful for any further advice

thanks

nick

 

[robertmiller]

get rid of the missingsync and you will restore system firewall services back!