Screen Sharing/Firewall Catastrophe: Michael Was Right!

[George Handley]

Michael,

First off, sorry for the delay in responding, however, because of it, I have new information supporting your position.

RE: "What I seem to have missed, is the reasoning behind your having changed your firewall settings."

As I'm sure you remember, yesterday there was quite a flurry of posts to the List on Henk's loss of Screen Sharing after he discovered his Mini's firewall turned off, and he turned it on only to discover he had no screen sharing, and how Paul gave him instructions to fix it with the misconception that Henk had just installed a new version of Apple Remote Desktop. Henk advised otherwise, but profusely thanked Paul as his instructions even in the total absence of Apple Remote, totally regained Henk 's Screen Sharing.

Henk did NOT have the problems I have, but I guessed my problems started simultaneously the very moment I turned on and off my Mini's firewall. Now, I'm back to square one… see below.

I had not planned on getting back on the subject of my system's idiosyncracies for another couple weeks, but when I performed this firewall On/Off misstep yesterday, and I tried over and over to fix it, I finally had to give up as I had nothing more to try, and still can't, for the life of me, understand ANY connection to the OS's firewall and just a very few select XTension units. 

In last night's episode, yes there were some units involved that I'd had problems with before, but now there were new others.

The new information is that I had friends arrive for lunch as I first started replying to you. I gave them a tour of the house, and what do you suppose happened? :-)

Yep, all the units that failed after I cycled the Mini's firewall yesterday, and then began working correctly when I went to bed… worked fine until they failed again (As usually happens when I demo anything :-)) exactly the same way. Equally important is the fact that when I arrived home this afternoon, everything works fine again to this moment.

All that together, I agree, implies that yesterday's experience was merely a coincidence, and nothing to do with the firewall as I haven't touched it today.

Now some specific information on what has identified itself, over there last four years as being a problematic XTension unit, as well as the additional names of units that showed up as of last night and today, and I'll try to make a chart of them showing the breaker, phase and unit & house number as an exercise to see if I can denote any obvious connections.

Panel	Breaker		Phase	House & Unit #	Description											History

   1		11			B		H2				Exercise Room fluorescents (Each with their own inline filter)		Never been a problem

   1		14			A		G8				Living Room Mantle lights								Never been a problem

   1		14			A		D16				Theatre Screen										Was a problem 2.5 years ago

   1		14			A		C12				BBQ Light											Always an intermittent problem

   2		38			A		I2				Master bath medicine cabinet LED under counter lights		     	Always an intermittent problem

Now the first obvious thing is that three of the units are on the same breaker, so when this happens again, and all the units above don't work, I can unplug the mantle lights and the screen separately to see if that corrects the situation. That will give me a starting point.

Again, I'm sorry for jumping the gun, but I thought I just knew that the firewall started all this… and it did jive exactly in time to when I noted some units not operating.

I'll try to stay silent again, and wait for what surly will happen again.

Berst wishes,

George







On Oct 30, 2013, at 12:13 PM, Michael <michael at shed.com> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 30, 2013, at 12:59 PM, George Handley <ghandley at kc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
>> * Not all, but I'm still trying to discern a cause and effect on a couple new peculiarities.
>> 
> 
> Therein is part of the problem… you are trying to Make it a single problem…
> There is no evidence sufficient to take any leap of faith.
> 
> What I seem to have missed, is the reasoning behind your having changed your firewall settings.
> 
> The fact that some X10 devices May have started failing after that, is certainly not something
> that can be directly linked in time with the firewall changes.
> 
> And you mentioned that those devices had had troubles in the past…
> 
> Consider you have two separate problems (or just one now), and work the problem
> from the simplest point of view First…
> 
> michael
> 
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