I have a WiX installer project where I have added two firewall exceptions as part of the installer by using the WiX FirewallException. This works great when the client machine is using Windows Firewall, but I got a report that a user failed to get the solution running when using Norman’s Personal Firewall. Some question regarding this:
- Will other firewall products in general respect rules added to the Windows Firewall? If so – is this just an import or will firewall products always respect changes to Windows Firewall rules?
- Are there any generic way to add firewall exceptions so that all/many of the firewalls will respect them during an installer such as the Firewall extensions in WiX?
- Will usage of netsh result in firewall exceptions getting added to other products than Windows Firewall?
I believe the answer to all of that is no, no and no. This is one of the reasons that I don’t even try to do any of this in my installs. I always encourage application development to write systems that don’t need massaging of the firewall and/or get the systems engineers to work with documentation to properly document to the end user the networking requirements. I only attempt automagical in the installer if everyone understands it’s a best effort attempt and that documentation must be available to assist users in integrating into their custom environment. That and I’m naturally adverse to having my way with users operating system configuration settings without their (true) consent.