User

24.01.2008 05:58:02

Hello,

I cannot get Remote Buddy to work with my Firewall. I have followed 
the steps outlined in the Setup and the FAQ precisely.

If I disable the firewall, (Allow all incoming connections), then 
connecting from my iPhone using http://Macintosh.local:8888/ works and 
I get the logon page. So it's not an addressing problem.

If I then change the firewall settings to the recommended one, (Set 
access for specific services and applications), with an entry for 
Remote Buddy, Allow incoming connections, I can't connect and the 
attempt times out on the client (iPhone) side. On the Macintosh side, 
the firewall log is the following:

Jan 23 20:29:39 Macintosh Firewall[91]: Deny Remote Buddy connecting 
from 192.168.15.2:49750 uid = 0 proto=6 
Jan 23 20:30:09: --- last message repeated 6 times --- 
Jan 23 20:30:11 Macintosh Firewall[91]: Deny Remote Buddy connecting 
from 192.168.15.2:49750 uid = 0 proto=6 
Jan 23 20:30:41: --- last message repeated 1 time ---

What I don't understand is why the Mac thinks the iPhone is trying to 
come in over port 49750 ???

Please advise, and thanks, I think Remote Buddy sounds very promising! 

User

25.01.2008 05:12:37

I have resolved this. I don't know why this worked.

In the Remote Buddy window, I inadvertently unchecked 'Enabled AJAX Remote'. Of course, I rechecked it. This must have reset something, because I then saw the logon page, and things are now working.

There is something that is not getting properly inititalized, that gets set when that checkbox is unchecked and then checked.

Hope this helps.

Guten Abend, 
Keith 

User

17.05.2008 00:16:55

Hi,

I've tried everything, but now I am really frustrated! 
I have OSX10.5, iPhone 1.1.4 disabled all firewall settings, even in my linksys wrt54G router, and I cannot get my iPhone to connect!

Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding. is what I get every single tim I try to connect.

Do you have any suggestions?

I tried the demo a couple of months ago and that did work, however, I don't know what has changed since then...

Please help!

Anyone willing to give it a try through iChat, sharing my screen?

Thanks 

User

09.06.2008 17:54:31

I have been having these problems since the ajax remote has been introduced. 
For some reason I do believe this is more a problem with apple's firewall than with remote buddy, but still very annoying. 
A competing product I use does work perfectly through the firewall, and it is much faster in accessing my itunes database...but that is another discussion I think. 
I'm sure Felix will chime in here with a solution. 

User

09.06.2008 23:21:01

The bold FAQ entry "How do I setup AJAX Remote?" is a good starting 
point. It helps you setup the AJAX Remote correctly and point you to 
more essentially non-RB-specific FAQ entries for typical network issues.

Regarding the firewall, the FAQ includes a pictured step-by-step How- 
To on how to configure the Leopard and Tiger firewall correctly 
respectively.

With the current implementation of the firewall in Leopard, I lack to 
see a real use for the average user in activating it while at the same 
time, it can cause many non-obvious problems for unexperienced users 
due to the way it interacts with code signing. Code signing can be a 
security plus, but also cause unwanted side effects if a user breaks 
the signing of an app - which is easy enough. For copies of apps whose 
code signing has been broken, the Leopard firewall will still display 
the app in its list of exceptions, but not apply them. The 
consequences: the configuration seems correct, yet the firewall will 
behave differently and the app in question can no longer accept 
ingoing connections. Only removing the app's entry, deleting the copy 
of the .app bundle, reinstalling a fresh, unaltered copy of the .app 
bundle in question (with code signing intact), then readding it to the 
list of exceptions will make the Leopard firewall do what it says it 
does in System Preferences.

Regarding the FAQ entries on typical network issues - although not a 
task or part of Remote Buddy - the most common ones as well as some 
special ones are covered there, too: from setting up your Mac-hosted 
WiFi network to solving problems with neighbouring WiFi networks using 
the same channel all the way through to diagnosing packet drops, 
determining the reliability of your WiFi network, documenting general 
WiFi driver problems in OS releases prior to 10.5.2 when using 
802.11n, descriptions on how to select a different 802.11 standard, 
listing sources of interference (including concurrent use of 
Bluetooth), etc, etc.

None of this is caused by or under control of Remote Buddy. Remote 
Buddy is not a network setup or debugging utility. It merely utilizes 
existing TCP/IP networks (be it Ethernet, IP-over-Firewire, WiFi, VPNs 
or anything else that transports your Mac's TCP/IP traffic) like any 
other network software. It doesn't differ from FireFox, Safari or - if 
you so want - ping in that regard.

Since neither network setup, nor TCP/IP stack, nor Firewall, nor WiFi 
drivers nor WiFi hardware are part of Remote Buddy or its feature set, 
IOSPIRIT's support is (just like the makers of f.ex. FireFox) also not 
the right adressee regarding problems and questions with these.

The right adressees for those are the makers of the respective 
components - which typically are Apple / AppleCare and/or the sellers 
or makers of the hardware in use.

Regarding speed: you need to differentiate between the speed of Remote 
Buddy - and the speed of the device that renders the delivered 
content. Remote Buddy itself is lightning fast (just use the AJAX 
Remote in Safari on your Mac via http://localhost:8888/ to see 
yourself).

The rendering of the web interface in the iPhone's web browser, on the 
other hand, can never be at the speed of a desktop client. The more 
functionality you offer through it, the more compact you offer it and 
the more graphical gems (especially transparency and transitions) you 
add, the more CPU time will of course be needed. Yet I find that AJAX 
Remote balance performance and visual appearance very well and is 
highly usable even with bigger libraries.

That said, we can expect speed to automatically further (and vastly) 
improve in the future - the team working on WebKit (Safari's rendering 
engine) is apparantly hard at work to deliver much better performance 
with future releases:

http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

User

12.07.2008 18:57:33

I'm having trouble with this as well. The AJAX remote used to work for me but I hadn't used it in a while. I try to connect to http://hostname.local:8888/ from my iPod touch but it fails. I see this in my firewall log:

Jul 12 12:55:40 hostname Firewall[48]: Deny Remote Buddy connecting from 192.168.1.144:50511 uid = 0 proto=6

I have doublechecked the firewall configuration for Remote Buddy and it looks like it does in the FAQ.

What I don't get is the port number listed in the firewall log. That's definitely not the port I'm trying to connect to.

UPDATE: I deleted the firewall rule and re-added it, then restarted Remote Buddy and it's working again.

Last edited: 12.07.2008 19:03:01 

User

14.07.2008 11:26:17

Thanks for asking.

A connection always has two ports. An origin port (here: the one the 
iPod Touch connects from - 50511) and a destination port (here: the 
port RB opens on your machine and the iPod Touch wants to connect to - 
8888).

Given the port number, it appears as if the firewall blocks the 
incoming connection. If you run Leopard and your setup looks exactly 
like the one in the FAQ, there are two possible solutions:

1) Disable the firewall altogether. Since all OS services you run are 
not firewalled by it and you add an exception for the only other 
service you are running to allow everybody to connect to it, the 
difference and security win is zero, but you avoid all the problems 
the Leopard firewall can cause (see 2).

2) Remote Buddy is a code-signed application to ease interaction with 
the Firewall and Keychain and avoid you being annoyed with OS X asking 
for your permissions on each update. If, however, the code signing is 
broken (which can easily happen if f.ex. you use a copy of RB you 
previously used under Tiger), OS X will ignore all exceptions (in the 
Firewall) and permissions (in Keychain) you have set up and block all 
of these accesses. That, of course, won't keep it from still listing 
both permissions and defined exception rules. Solution here is to quit 
Remote Buddy, download a fresh copy of Remote Buddy (with intact code 
signing) and replace your current copy of Remote Buddy with it.

I'd love to add a requester to Remote Buddy that tells you should code 
signing of your copy be broken, but there is no API for application 
programmers to the code signing mechanism of Leopard as far as I know 
(and I did quite a lot of research).

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz