Another Firestarter thread
 

I think this one may be somewhat different. Generic Search turned up 600 past threads on the topic of Firestarter, so without spending several hours checking, I doubt whether or not myself or the admins know for sure.

Be that as it may...

I was having trouble with Samba shares between my desktop (Windows XP Pro) and a laptop (Ubuntu Jaunty), both connected to the same (Netgear RP6v4) router. Either one machine or the other, while Firestarter was running and the Samba ports allowed for use on each one's IP and the standard SMB ports forwarded or triggered on the Netgear, would from time to time be denied access to either already-mounted shares or new listed shares in their respective "Network Neighborhood" lists. With Firestarter "off" (I know it's never really switched off; there is, from what I have read, even while not running always some small degree of 'protection' from other under-the-hood resources in Linux), this didn't happen. The behavior was identical, or nearly so, for FTP and SSH between the two machines. I literally presumed Firestarter was "seeing" the shares mounted and allowing only the earlier ones to authorize, as if new requests were coming in from a blocked IP or server name (which they obviously weren't). It seemed vaguely logical, as it was happening with shares to and from both machines.

I found out what the problem was: no winbind on the Ubuntu box.

But how was I to know? Nowhere on Firestarter's pages was it mentioned as being necessary for those users with mixed networks (Lin/Win), nor was it even alluded to on the numerous how-to pages that come up in spades nowadays as Google links. I found out that it was missing by reading this thread on the Ubuntu forums. Ironically, installing winbind gave the OP on that thread no relief in the long run. So far it's been fine for me.

So if you are having the same kind of trouble I was having between Linux and Windows boxes and their SMB protocol share authorizations "evaporating" with Firestarter on, winbind is worth a try.

Pardon please the fact that both my referred links are Ubuntu-related. It so happens that is my "angle of approach" nowadays.

Hope this helps somebody.

BZT

So this is an answer, looking for a question :-).

Good of you to tell us - I always check the similar threads before posting.