One easy work-around for Lion Firewall problems

[Gregory]

It took me weeks to pin down, but if you're having Lion Firewall problems which include not allowing Remoter into your Mac, then you could try this:

delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist
reboot
--> the Firewall will be OFF.
turn OFF and then ON the sharing services you wish to make available, including in this instance Screen Sharing.
turn ON the Firewall.
if desired, click the Advanced button to access the advanced Firewall options such as stealth.

From this point on, (on my Mac Pro running Lion 10.7.2), the Firewall runs as expected... **until** the Mac is rebooted again. Something in the reboot process apparently corrupts the pref file.

cheers.
(VNC Remoter 3.2.1 on an iPad v1)

[raf]

Wow, that's interesting. (And bizarre). Thanks for posting!, I'm sure it will be useful to a lot of people.

Raf.

[Gregory]

it's still true, at least in my case. I've repeated the problem and fix at least three times recently.

unfortunately, if my Mac Pro's screen is locked, Remoter is unable to interact with the login screen. when I begin to type the password, the connection collapses, and Remoter crashes too. if my Mac Pro's screen is unlocked, there are absolutely no problems interacting.

any ideas?

cheers,
Gregory

[raf]

Sorry, no. Hopefully a user with experience with the Mac firewall can help.
Does this happen if you have the firewall disabled? (It shouldn't -- if it does, then there is another problem at hand: Make sure you're using your Mac username and Mac password in Remoter's VNC username and VNC Password fields)

Raf.