10.3: Personal ipfw firewall configuration startup items fix

Nov 06, '03 10:21:00AM

Contributed by: fabrizio

I am used to manually configuring the ipfw firewall since 10.1. As reported in various sites on the net, I created an /etc/ipfw.conf file with all the rules I wanted. I also created an ipfw directory under /Library/StartupItems/, in which I placed two files: ipfw, containing these lines:

 #!/bin/sh
 /usr/sbin/sysctl -w net.inet.ip.fw.verbose=1
 /usr/sbin/sysctl -w net.inet.ip.fw.verbose_limit=500
 /sbin/ipfw -q /etc/ipfw.conf
and StartupParameters.plist, containing these lines:
  {
    Description = "ipfw firewall";
    OrderPreference = "None";
    Provides = ("Firewall");
    Requires = ("Resolver");
    Messages =
    {
      start = "Sto avviando il firewall";
      stop = "Sto disattivando il firewall";
    };
  }
In Panther, this configuration stopped working. At the login window, the beach ball started to spin indefinitely and I had to reboot in single user mode and disable the ipfw startup item. Finally, I changed Requires = ("Resolver"); to Requires = ("Super Server");, and now it works again. I tried several reboots without any problems -- I can login and the ipfw rules I defined are active.

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