Firewall & Site Admin Issues - Time-outs

platypussy · #1 July 2nd, 2005, 03:30 PM

Hi!

Just signed up here. I'm a bit new to contemporary web admin, having not worked on my own site since the '90s. My osX (Tiger) firewall seems to be interfering with uploading & downloading files while I'm working on my website (my isp at the moment is uniserve.com, but the sites I'm working on are both at pacificcoast.net - owned by uniserve - and 1and1.com, and the up/downloading issues are identical). Basically, whether using Fetch or Dreaweaver, and regardless of the various firewall options & passive/not-passive ftp settings I've tried, the transfer times out frequently & then I have to reconnect, sometimes several times. The problem goes away only if I turn BOTH my firewall & passive transfer OFF. I'm worried that in this state I expose my system too much? I'm on dsl, & there's a router in the house, connecting 3 macs & a pc (usually only 2 of the macs are on, both running 10.4), but there is no security set up on the router (Belkin wireless) as far as I know (I just set it up with all defaults). I don't want to have to keep turning the firewall on & off every time I want to transfer a few files (I'm set up so that Dreamweaver automatically updates the files on the site on every save, and I like it that way, since I then immediately check it out on various browsers). Is there a particular port I should be opening? Should I just not worry about my firewall being down for hours while I set up the site? Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks, Goesta

scruffy · #2 July 4th, 2005, 12:05 AM

A firewall is really a second-best thing to not running network services at all. If you're not running network services, the firewall doesn't do much...

Go to system preferences, check the sharing tab - if you're not running file sharing, printer sharing, etc., then the firewall isn're really protecting anything & it doesn't make much difference if it's on or off.

rob m · #3 September 20th, 2008, 11:33 PM

Hi Goesta

I am currently having exactly the same issues as you have described and after trawling through the internet, have not been able to find any solutions.

Did you end up finding a solution, apart from turning the Firewall & passive transfer off?

I am using Tiger 10.4.11 and Dreamweaver CS3.

Thanks, Rob