Apple Mac OS X Server manual Managing the NAT Service, Viewing Firewall Service Log

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Viewing Firewall Service Log

You can use tail or any other file listing tool to view the contents of the ipfilter service log.

To view the latest entries in the log:

$ tail log-file

You can use the serveradmin getLogPaths command to see where the current ipfilter service log is located.

To display the log path:

$ sudo serveradmin command ipfilter:command = getLogPaths

The computer will respond with output similar to the following:

ipfilter:systemLog = <system-log>

Value	Description
<system-log>	The location of the ipfilter service log.
	Default = /var/log/ipfw.log

Using Firewall Service to Simulate Network Activity

You can use the Firewall service in Mac OS X service in conjunction with Dummynet, a general-purpose network load simulator. For more information about Dummynet, see ai3.asti.dost.gov.ph/sat/dummynet.html. Also see the ipfw man page.

Managing the NAT Service

Network Address Translation (NAT) is sometimes referred to as IP masquerading. NAT is used to allow multiple computers access to the Internet with only one assigned public or external IP address. NAT allows you to create a private network that accesses the Internet through a NAT router or gateway.

The NAT router takes all the traffic from your private network and remembers which internal address made the request. When the NAT router receives the response to the request, it forwards it to the originating computer. Traffic that originates from the Internet does not reach any of the computers behind the NAT router unless Port forwarding is enabled.

Note: The Firewall service must be configured and running to have NAT service. The NAT service divert rule is run through ipfw.

Chapter 14 Working with Network Services