Firewall Problems with 10.6 Server

[blapan]

I’m using a Mini with a USB ethernet adapter as a NAT router (The USB Adapter is plugged into the modem and the internal is plugged into my network) and most of the time it works great. However, sometimes when the internet goes out or I lose power the firewall starts blocking absolutely all traffic from the outside (including DHCP) when everything comes back online.

Here is where things get weird. When this happens I am able to “fix” it by rebooting 2-6 times until it starts working again, I don’t know why or how this remedys the problem but it eventually does.

I know the firewall is the culprit and not something else because one time when it was giving me trouble I just turned off the firewall entirely and suddenly everything worked, ICPM, DHCP, DNS and HTTP. Obviously NAT didn’t work so this wasn’t a solution but at least it narrowed down the problem.

The ipfw.log file isn’t much help since the only thing in there is IPv6 rules flushed, IPv4 rules flushes, firewall start and firewall stop all of which are explained by actions that I did. There are no errors of any kind that might explain why the firewall acts like a brickwall sometimes.

I was hoping someone here could give me some advice on how to diagnose this problem or has some insight as to what is going on.

[l008com]

I’ve been having this problem since 10.6 came out, on every machine I’ve put 10.6 Server on. I’m so glad I finally found SOMEONE else that has seen this problem.
My current home server/router was running 10.5. I upgraded it to 10.6 about a month ago. Ran great for a month, then a few hours ago, my firewall decided no more internet connection. Just like you, i can turn off the firewall and the internet comes right back. But then NAT doesn’t work. I’ve configured the firewall to allow ALL traffic, but it still allows NO traffic. I’m probably going to throw a quick install of 10.5 on a usb disk and boot my server off that, so I can at least get some internet going here.

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