Built in firewall?

PowermacG4_450

PowermacG4_450

OS X Jaguar
Im told osX has a unix based firewall built in... accessable via terminal?

is this true? How do I use it? commands? how do I learn more?

I have a big osX book, and it does NOT mention a firewall feature at all.
 
Yes it is true.

The command is ipfw. I suggest you do a man ipfw before you go around mucking with it. Of note, these two commands are very useful: sudo ipfw flush, which reverts the firewall to off when you give the command your password, and sudo ipfw list, which lists the rules that are in the firewall.

There are GUI apps to use this, though. One notable one is BrickHouse, which is available via VersionTracker.
 
Brickhouse ROCKS. It's a completely Cocoa-coded GUI for the exceptional (but command-line only) FreeBSD firewall application. This is one shareware application that's actually USEFUL; I was more than happy to pay the modest fee, which I believe was $25.00.
 
thanks for the info... cool.

Ive actually been messing around with norton personal firewall.... not a bad program... anyone ever try that?

thanks again.
 
I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it, but I'd be stunned if it could hold a candle to BrickHouse and the BSD firewall.
 
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