Women in Technology

Article:		Exploring the Mac OS X Firewall
Subject:		StartupItems troubleshooting
Date:		2006-04-20 13:40:37
From:		iamstein
Hi, I followed the above directions for creating my custom firewall. I did the following: 1) Created a /System/Libraries/Firewall directory 2) Copyied and pasted the text from this website into a Firewall file and a StartupParameters.plist file in that subdirectory 3) Added a line to /etc/hostconfig that says: FIREWALL='-YES-' And yet, when I restart my computer, it's still using the same old firewall. Got any ideas? Thanks, Andy

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• StartupItems troubleshooting
  2006-04-21 10:55:45  peterhickman [View]
  
  
  You have created the wrong directory, you need to create /Library/StartupItems/Firewall/ It is this directory, /Library/StartupItems/, that OSX looks for when looking for items to run at startup.
  
  Otherwise the rest looks fine.
  
  As I understand it from other people the /Library/StartupItems/ directory may not exist by default. It was so long ago that I can no longer remember if I created it or it was there all along. Here are the permissions from my machine:
  
  drwxr-xr-x root wheel /Library/StartupItems/
drwxr-xr-x root wheel /Library/StartupItems/Firewall/
  
  As a note, never do anything in the /System directory.
  

• StartupItems troubleshooting
  2006-04-21 08:24:14  iamstein [View]
  
  
  Here's a little more info. I changed the name from Firewall to Firewall2, just to see what happened.
  
  bacchus:~ root# /sbin/SystemStarter start Firewall2
  Welcome to Macintosh.
  Initializing network
  Loading Shared IP extension
  kextload: extension /System/Library/Extensions/SharedIP.kext appears to be valid
  kextload: loading extension /System/Library/Extensions/SharedIP.kext
  kextload: sending 1 personality to the kernel
  kextload: extension /System/Library/Extensions/SharedIP.kext is already loaded
  Loading IP Firewall extension
  kextload: extension /System/Library/Extensions/IPFirewall.kext appears to be valid
  kextload: loading extension /System/Library/Extensions/IPFirewall.kext
  kextload: sending 1 personality to the kernel
  kextload: extension /System/Library/Extensions/IPFirewall.kext is already loaded
  Exec failed for item /System/Library/StartupItems/Firewall2: Permission denied
  Firewall2 (396) did not complete successfully.
  The following StartupItems failed to properly start:
  /System/Library/StartupItems/Firewall2 - execution of Startup script failed
  Startup complete.
  Hangup
  

• StartupItems troubleshooting
  2006-04-20 13:58:33  iamstein [View]
  
  
  Oh, yes, I also, of course created a /etc/rc.firewall file and at the terminal window, if
  
  Furthermore, if I type:
  sudo /etc/rc.firewall
  
  It runs just fine