How can I make unbound's accepting of incoming network connections in application firewall in Catalina 'stick'?

[Gerben Wierda]

Sorry, no go.

I found a solution on superuser with 0 votes ;-). https://superuser.com/a/940696/582447

It turns out that I just had to turn the firewall off and on again. It might have been a necessary last step to make it regenerate something, but after that step, a reboot (or just port unload/load cycle) will just allow unbound to startup and accept incoming connections without further panels

Note, that on my active production server I run Murus (PF configurator) and Vallum (configurator for the application-level firewall), which, though somewhat hard to work with sometimes, work well in configuring this.

Gerben Wierda (LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerbenwierda>)
R&A Enterprise Architecture <https://ea.rna.nl/> (main site)
Book: Chess and the Art of Enterprise Architecture <https://ea.rna.nl/the-book/>
Book: Mastering ArchiMate <https://ea.rna.nl/the-book-edition-iii/>

> On 15 Mar 2021, at 02:17, Steven Smith <steve.t.smith at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Just turn off your firewall! 😝
> 
> Seriously, the macOS firewall is an Application firewall. If that suits your risk profile, you can control it through the command line:
> 
> /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw -h
> 
> Port- and packet-based filtering is handled by pfctl, and that’s a lot more flexible than the macOS application firewall.
> 
>> On Mar 14, 2021, at 20:55, Gerben Wierda via macports-users <macports-users at lists.macports.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I am running an extensive MacPorts (with postfix, dovecot, nginx, minion, etc.) on my macOS Server, which is still running macOS Mojave.
>> 
>> On one of the other Macs, running macOS Catalina, I run a backup unbound caching nameserver. This also offers me a way to do some minimal testing of the MacPorts setup on a more recent version of macOS (as a preparation for upgrading the Mojave system when Apple stops supporting it)
>> 
>> The unbound on macOS Catalina runs fine, except for one thing. After a reboot, unbound will not accept incoming connections until I have logged in an answer the application firewalls’ question:
>> 
>> Do you want the application “unbound” to accept incoming network connections?
>> Clicking Deny may limit the application’s behaviour. This setting can be changed in the Firewall pane of Security & Privacy preferences.
>> 
>> I can answer yes, check the entry in the application firewall (set to yes, accept, even before I allow it through the panel). But even if it is set to accept incoming connections, after a reboot I need to log in and answer again via the GUI before it accepts. Setting this in the Application firewall doesn’t ’stick’ for some reason.
>> 
>> This is not acceptable behaviour if I ever upgrade my Mojave Server, as that one must be able to do unsupervised reboots/running without any login.
>> 
>> Is there something special in Catalina I must do? Or is this expected behaviour?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Gerben Wierda (LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerbenwierda>)
>> R&A Enterprise Architecture <https://ea.rna.nl/> (main site)
>> Book: Chess and the Art of Enterprise Architecture <https://ea.rna.nl/the-book/>
>> Book: Mastering ArchiMate <https://ea.rna.nl/the-book-edition-iii/>
>> 

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