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Peter5678 Author

Level 1

0 points

Firewall keeps asking permission for iTunes

I have the following happening, everytime I start iTunes: My Firewall, the one in Mac OS 10.6.3 (turned on), keeps asking me if i want to give permission to iTunes to allow for incoming connections. I answer with yes, and iTunes appears in the Firewall preferences screen as being accepted. But every following time i open iTunes, I get the same question.

iTunes works fine, but this is just annoying. I tried restarting the Firewall, adding the programs manually, same result.
As I think the Firewall should be on, this will just keep happening and in time will really start to annoy me.
Does anyone have this same problem, and more importantly,... does anyone have a solution??

Kind regards, Peter

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.3), I love my Mac

Posted on Apr 27, 2010 4:07 AM

36 replies

West29

Level 1

24 points

Dec 15, 2010 5:10 PM in response to Peter5678

A download of the full install corrected this for me.

Drag the iTunes to Trash
Reboot
Download from apple.com/itunes
Install

First may not be needed but don't hurt.

Stefan M

Level 1

0 points

Dec 21, 2010 3:43 AM in response to Peter5678

Hi, I'd just like to say that I also have/had this problem. I did everything; re-installed, removed iTunes from the permissions list (it just kept reappearing), and I just wasn't going to remove the firewall. The 'solution' I'm now using is that I just made an Automator app that runs iTunes then clicks Allow for me automatically. So It put that in the dock instead of Itunes and made its icon the iTunes icon and bingo, it works.
Annoying that Apple haven't fixed this after 2 years.... anyway.

Happy Holidays!

Jan 13, 2011 1:26 PM in response to Stefan M

I had the same problem, here is a solution and the probable cause:

I followed a lenghty suggestion that removed iTunes completely from my system and re-installed it (including preference files and iTunes Helper). That fixed it for me. What I noticed afterwards was that my half-star ratings were gone and replaced with "regular" stars. I activated the half star ratings via a terminal preference hack which probably removed the "trusted" signature that the firewall seems to want in order for it to stop asking for permission. So if the problem persists, try removing any of those hacks or other modifications that might mess up the "trusted" signature.

Good luck!

Mar 25, 2011 3:21 PM in response to Peter5678

This is a little silly that this hasn't been fixed. This has happened repeatedly for me across the last 3 versions of iTunes on 5 different Apple machines. Can a developer please fix the code signature in the upgrade version of iTunes?

Please investigate what is different about the signatures in the upgrade version vs. standalone version and fix it so that people don't have to deal with the firewall issues this discrepancy causes. This is a 100% reproducible problem and should be relatively easy to resolve.

Steps to reproduce
1. Install a FULL version of iTunes (say version 9)
2. Follow the update path through to version 10
3. Note that you will now be prompted for permission to let iTunes through the firewall on every startup of the application.

I've seen other users complaining that iPhoto is beginning to suffer the same pop-up on every start. If the process for creating the signature files is the same or similar, these application's issues may share a common root cause.

wvdavis

Level 1

0 points

Apr 5, 2011 9:50 AM in response to Peter5678

I found that by dragging iTunes to the trash, rebooting and reinstalling iTunes did the trick.

May 19, 2011 6:58 AM in response to Peter5678

I have written up a solution. Check it out here, http://nerdramblings.tumblr.com/post/5637291886/fix-apple-firewall-asking-for-pe rmissions

Best of luck.

May 24, 2011 6:42 PM in response to JDENredden

Thanks JDENredden. Worked perfectly.

May 24, 2011 9:57 PM in response to Ron Wasserman

Welcome Ron. Glad it worked for you.

cowboy36

Level 1

0 points

Sep 28, 2011 8:12 PM in response to JDENredden

Thanks Ron! Worked like a charm!

cowboy36

Level 1

0 points

Sep 28, 2011 8:12 PM in response to cowboy36

Oops typo. I meant thank you JDENredden! Thank you so much!

DnCstl

Level 1

4 points

Oct 16, 2011 3:58 PM in response to Peter5678

Hello everyone...

What worked for me was to to to System Prefrences, then to Security and Firewall, then to Firewall, then to Advance, and remove the iTunes from the list Allowed list and leave on the check box "Automatically Allow Singed Softare..."

A guess and only a guess is that iTunes is singed but also in the allowed list and it gets confused with the two... once I removed it, it works great now.

Jan 17, 2012 4:19 PM in response to DnCstl

DnCstl's method worked for me. Thanks for posting it.

bj4mac

Level 1

1 points

Jan 20, 2012 8:10 PM in response to DnCstl

Thanks DnCstl, so far this is working for me.

pocsy

Level 1

4 points

Jan 22, 2012 1:08 AM in response to DnCstl

Thanks DnCstl! Amazingly it seems to have worked, despite the fact that when I use JDENredden command to check the signature status ist reports the signature as broken.

What makes me worry about Apple now is:

Signature broken AND explicit permission for iTunes in firewall settings AND general permission for signed software => constant prompt (unwanted behavior)

Signature broken AND NO EXPLICIT permission for iTunes in firewall settings AND general permission for signed software => no prompts (wanted behavior, but seems really unsafe, should not be intended by Apple)

Anyway, happy to have gotten rid of the constant prompting, bur really unhappy about the fact that I cannot tell the status of my firewall.

Feb 14, 2012 12:05 PM in response to DnCstl

Works for me on latest Lion edition. Cheers. Was annoying me immensely.

Firewall keeps asking permission for iTunes