Firestarter not starting: solved
 

Hi everybody,

My change to Etch from Sarge (new installation) is a bit of a headache up until now.
Although I successfully installed Firestarter as my firewall (using Synaptic at first and then uninstalling and installing again with apt-get install) it isn't starting when I enter my normal Gnome session (/etc/init.d/firestarter status = Firestarter is stopped).
It starts OK when I open the front end and test again.

I'm also having trouble while deactivating all the unneeded services (ssh, exim4, and so). For some reason rpcbind doesn't want to go off. I have thoroughly followed the /etc/rc2.d/README instructions on how to set services off. I only have succeeded making chmod -x to the /init.d/portmap file, as I do in Slackware, but I understand that's not the right way to do it in Debian. Is it?

Please, although I welcome all kinds of advice, the "change to Guarddog" answer is not an option. I am very happy with this firewall in several other distros (including Sarge).

For choosing which services run at startup, I use a console based program, sysv-rc-conf. Just use the arrow keys and spacebar to set services for any runlevel.

As to why firestarter isn't coming up, I don't know. Is there anything your syslog saying it failed to load at boot?

mmmh. This is what I have found a few times (different logs) in my syslog:

NetworkManager: <WARNING>^I nm_spawn_process (): nm_spawn_process('/usr/sbin/nscd -i hosts'): could not spawn process. (Failed to execute child process "/usr/sbin/nscd" (No such file or directory))

Maybe I have set to off something I shouldn't?

nscd - Name Service Cache Daemon
A daemon which handles passwd, group and host lookups for running programs and caches the results for the next query. You should install this package only if you use slow Services like LDAP, NIS or NIS+

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe the firewall is trying to start before the Network is up..

Check to see the startup script is linked in runlevel 2.
it-etch:/etc# ls /etc/rc2.d/*firestarter
/etc/rc2.d/S20firestarter

If that startup script exists, maybe you should try moving it to a later startup time and see if that resolves the issue.

mv /etc/rc2.d/S20firestarter /etc/rc2.d/S25firestarter

It doesn't work, farslayer.
I have tried with S25 and later with 50. None of them starts the firewall.

Try doing it with update-rc.d

update-rc.d -f firestarter remove
update-rc.d firestarter start 20 2 .

Does "sudo iptables -n -L -v" say anything?

EDIT: You are using runlevel 2 aren't you? "runlevel" will tell.

Yes, runlevel is number 2.
This is what iptables -n -L -v says:

Well, iptables isn't loaded as you already knew.
Are you using network manager? If yes, perhaps you need to start it even later. See if this helps: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=417663

Wow! Thank you very much, makuyl.
Now it works just fine!! :-)
I applied the patch they show in the link and it went perfect.
I suppose it will be an official Debian patch in the next few weeks.

Here it goes again for anybody who might be experiencing the same problem

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=417663

Thanks again makuyl and thanks to the rest of the people also. I have learned a few things in the process ;-)

I love this forum!

No problem, and there most probably will be a security update to etch for this in a while.

firestarter "Authentication Rejected...failed" in Lenny boot
 

I tried moving firestarter boot script around, calling firestarter in /etc/rc.local and in gnome-sessions (start programs) and so forth. Alas, only way to get it started is from root terminal with
# firestarter --start-hidden &
i use wicd, wlan0 and a router. Network monitor and iptables are installed.