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Hi,
How to manually configure the Snow Leopard firewall. This is because I think this can create problem in my wireless printer sharing service which is need to be configured for my local area network. I don't know weather the firewall is working or not but as indicated I have to configure it manually for some incoming connections. I need some steps on the same. Thanks in advance.
The firewall is disabled by default. All incoming connections are obviously allowed. To enable and configure, click on the padlock in the bottom left of the window, then type your administrator password. Finally click on the Start button to activate the firewall. The firewall is now enabled, but it is necessary to set. To do this, click the Advanced button. Here you can configure that as per your need.
You can see a tab called Block all incoming connections. If you select this button, only remote connections essential services on your Mac will be allowed. But what are these essential services. It is necessary that this services are set to enable by default. But if you does not know much about it then you can use a third party antivirus tool for the same issue.
The essential services are a set of applications allowing your computer to discover services provided by other computers on the network. This setting prevents connections so with any other service or any other application sharing. This setting leaves open the necessary ports to the system as Hello, DHCP or IPSec, etc. If you check this box, the firewall will block all shared services such as file sharing, screen sharing, iChat Bonjour and iTunes music sharing.
That's right better do not disable them. Just below the first button, you will find a mini-window that allows settings to add / delete and configure incoming connections. In my list under the same windows I have 2 sharing services and two corresponding elements in two applications Check-Up and an extension belonging to Image Transfer. This are are the allowed connections. You can add more there if you want.
Once if you enabled sharing the services thus are visible in the list of firewall. To prevent incoming connections with one of these services, you must disable the service concerned in the panel Sharing. If you enable a sharing service, such as file sharing, Mac OS X opens a specific port on the firewall for communication service to work. This is automatic and you do not need to manually configure the firewall.