[simon hornby]

I'm not sure you've understood the architecture here. There are 3 components, the enforcement module, the management server and the GUI. I suspect from your reply that what you are thinking of as the management server is the gui, also known as SmartDashboard. The management server can be on the same machine as the enforcement module, and in small installations often is. The GUI can be on several different machines at the same time. The GUI is the program you run that allows you to manipulate objects and rules. It connects to the management server to do this. The management server holds the object and rule definitions, as well as some other tasks such as acting as a certificate authority, and compiles policies, which it pushes to the enforcement module. The enforcement module is your perimeter gateway that actually enforces the policy. As I said, the management server and the enforcement module can be on the same machine.

Moving on to your problem. Apologies if this is simplistic, I don't know how much Solaris you know.

Go to the management station (probably the same machine as your enforcement module) and enter 'ps -ef | grep fwm'

If there is no fwm process, do a cpstart and try connecting. If that fails, do the ps -ef | grep fwm again and make sure the fwm process has not died.

If this doesn't help, I would suggest going into cpconfig and removing all gui clients, then re-adding them.

If none of this helps, let us know if you have recently started using any VPNs or have upgraded the firewall. Also what version of firewall-1 you are using.