OS X Server: About the Firewall service
Learn about how the Firewall service is controlled in OS X Server.
In Mountain Lion and Mavericks, the Firewall service is not controlled by OS X Server.
If you upgrade or migrate to OS X Server (Mountain Lion or Mavericks) from Lion Server or Mac OS X Server v10.6, your existing firewall rules will remain active in ipfw. Server app in Mavericks will display an alert when you upgrade or migrate. Click the button in this alert to disable the previous firewall rules.
Additional Information
You can also move the previous firewall rules aside and disable ipfw with the following Terminal command:
sudo mv /etc/ipfilter /etc/ipfilter-old
The ipfw command is deprecated in OS X Mountain Lion and later. If you want to manually configure Firewall rules, use the pfctl binary for forward compatibility. For instructions, please see man pfctl.
