Mac does not appear to be accepting any incoming connections (firewall off)

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Level 1

5 points

Mac does not appear to be accepting any incoming connections (firewall off)

Hi, all.

I've been desperately trying to get my PS3 to talk to my Mac with zero success. I've tried a large range of software, from Twonky to MediaTomb to PS3MediaServer to EyeConnect and to MediaLink. All fail to recognise the PS3, and vice-versa.

Firewall is turned off, router appears fine (seems to work with other computers on network), but the problem persists.

The apps listed above are not the only ones which will not receive incoming connections from the LAN: VNC does not appear to work, and Transmission bittorrent client is telling me that my ports are on 'stealth' (though this could be a router issue).

If you think it may be a router issue, my router is a DG934G router provided by Sky Broadband.

I've recently re-installed the OS (harddrive failure, replaced), but the problem won't seem to budge.

Thanks very much in advance. I look forward to hearing your insight and wisdom.

MacBook 80GB HD, Intel purchased Feburary 2007, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on May 7, 2009 2:03 PM

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Answer 1

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 7, 2009 3:09 PM in response to tbotn

Have you set any port forwarding in the router? The default in most routers is to block all incoming connections that are not responses to outgoing commands and/or to block all but a few ports normally used for browsing, etc.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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Answer 2

tbotn Author

Level 1

5 points

May 8, 2009 8:55 AM in response to nerowolfe

Hi, thanks for your reply.

From what I have gathered, port forwarding only applies to if you want to accept incoming connections from the internet, and LAN connections should not require this. I have tried port forwarding, but it didn't work.

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Answer 3

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 8, 2009 9:40 AM in response to tbotn

tbotn wrote:
Hi, thanks for your reply.

From what I have gathered, port forwarding only applies to if you want to accept incoming connections from the internet, and LAN connections should not require this. I have tried port forwarding, but it didn't work.

It depends on the LAN router/switch which may have a firewall.
If you temporarily connect two Macs together directly with an ethernet cable, you can eliminate everything else.

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Answer 4

tbotn Author

Level 1

5 points

May 8, 2009 9:43 AM in response to nerowolfe

Would it be worth trying to connect a PS3 directly with an ethernet cable to my Mac, or will it only work with a router or a switch in between?

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Answer 5

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 8, 2009 2:00 PM in response to tbotn

tbotn wrote:
Would it be worth trying to connect a PS3 directly with an ethernet cable to my Mac, or will it only work with a router or a switch in between?

No, I mean a direct connection between the two computers. Nothing in-between them. Macs can autodetect the connection and you don't even need a reverse cable.
You should see each machine from the other one.
Check out this link
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2009041314172249

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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Answer 6

tbotn Author

Level 1

5 points

May 9, 2009 4:26 AM in response to nerowolfe

Okay. Unfortunately, I only have one Mac. I'm going to try Ubuntu on it and see if I can get streaming to my PS3 working. If that doesn't work, I'll have to blame the router.

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Answer 7

tbotn Author

Level 1

5 points

May 9, 2009 5:04 AM in response to tbotn

I've been scanning through my logs. Twonky Media Server (essentially a http server with a web browser interface) is running on my Mac, and I can access it through Safari on the same Mac.

Just as a test, I tried accessing it on an iPod Touch on the same wireless network, but it displayed the "Cannot Open Page" error message.

Here's what my system log had to say:

*May 9 12:59:14 ******** kernel[0]: ipfw: 64000 Deny TCP 192.168.0.5:57924 192.168.0.15:9000 in via en1*

This all seems very strange. Why is this incoming connection being denied? Again, I can confirm the firewall is turned off.

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Answer 8

Dogcow-Moof

Level 8

36,833 points

May 9, 2009 4:16 PM in response to tbotn

You must have a third party application or some startup files in place that specifically enable ipfw on your system, as the firewall in Mac OS X Leopard no longer uses ipfw. (ipfw still exists, but you must configure and start it manually.)

Could you have set up ipfw in a non-standard way on Tiger and those scripts are still being run now that you're using Leopard? Have you set up ipfw using a third-party app like WaterRoof on your machine post-upgrade?

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Answer 9

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 9, 2009 5:27 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

William Kucharski wrote:
You must have a third party application or some startup files in place that specifically enable ipfw on your system, as the firewall in Mac OS X Leopard no longer uses ipfw. (ipfw still exists, but you must configure and start it manually.)

Could you have set up ipfw in a non-standard way on Tiger and those scripts are still being run now that you're using Leopard? Have you set up ipfw using a third-party app

Good catch. I suspect that this is the problem.

Not being extremely familiar with ipfw, would the command
sudo ipfw disable firewall
do the trick?
Or at least verify that it is or is not the issue?

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Answer 10

tbotn Author

Level 1

5 points

May 10, 2009 4:02 AM in response to nerowolfe

nerowolfe wrote:

William Kucharski wrote:
You must have a third party application or some startup files in place that specifically enable ipfw on your system, as the firewall in Mac OS X Leopard no longer uses ipfw. (ipfw still exists, but you must configure and start it manually.)

Could you have set up ipfw in a non-standard way on Tiger and those scripts are still being run now that you're using Leopard? Have you set up ipfw using a third-party app

Good catch. I suspect that this is the problem.

Not being extremely familiar with ipfw, would the command
sudo ipfw disable firewall
do the trick?
Or at least verify that it is or is not the issue?

Hurray! My faith has been restored in all things networked! The command "sudo ipfw disable firewall" seemed to do the trick.

I've just tested Twonky and VNC, and for the first time ever, they're working! Next is to try streaming to the PS3....

Thank you all

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Answer 11

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 10, 2009 8:46 AM in response to tbotn

tbotn wrote:

nerowolfe wrote:

William Kucharski wrote:
You must have a third party application or some startup files in place that specifically enable ipfw on your system, as the firewall in Mac OS X Leopard no longer uses ipfw. (ipfw still exists, but you must configure and start it manually.)

Could you have set up ipfw in a non-standard way on Tiger and those scripts are still being run now that you're using Leopard? Have you set up ipfw using a third-party app

Good catch. I suspect that this is the problem.

Not being extremely familiar with ipfw, would the command
sudo ipfw disable firewall
do the trick?
Or at least verify that it is or is not the issue?

Hurray! My faith has been restored in all things networked! The command "sudo ipfw disable firewall" seemed to do the trick.

I've just tested Twonky and VNC, and for the first time ever, they're working! Next is to try streaming to the PS3....

Thank you all

Actually the real credit goes to William who discovered the problem from your log report. I merely followed up on his surmise and posted the firewall off command for you to try. However, the important thing is that your system is now working properly, which, after all, is the primary purpose of these forums.
Enjoy 🙂

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Answer 12

tbotn Author

Level 1

5 points

May 10, 2009 3:25 PM in response to nerowolfe

Thanks again for your help. The issue has been (mostly) resolved: torrents now download much faster (thanks to open incoming ports) and VNC works.

What I am still trying to set up is a media server on my Mac. PS3MediaServer (Java software I'm using) is now, for the first time, telling me that it has found the PS3, but the media server does not appear on the PS3 itself. To confirm that this was not a router issue, I tried the same software on another computer running Vista on the same network, and it worked perfectly. Do you have any suggestions? (I was thinking it might have something to do with multicast packets. My knowledge in networking is very limited).

What the PS3MediaServer logs tell me is that it receives one packet from the PS3 to begin with, but no subsequent ones. Seems strange.

Message was edited by: tbotn

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Answer 13

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 10, 2009 5:48 PM in response to tbotn

I would start a new thread with this issue, just to keep things moving along.
You will get more people looking at the problem with a new thread than a solved one 🙂

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