firestarter gives me this error
 

I am trying to get a working firewall enabled with slackware. I installed firestarter. It needs to be run from root. I get this error when I try to run it
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root@marsala:/home/shane# firestarter
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified


(firestarter:1527): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
root@marsala:/home/shane#
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If I remember this is the same error I get if I run other programs as root, which normally I don't need to..

1. why can't I run it from root?

2. is their an easy way to get a working firewall without firestarter? I feel the need to get somthing working right away.

that's because X will only allow connections from the user that is running X (you're starting the script as root) . to change this you could (as the regular user) run 'xhost +' to allow all connections to x server. make sure to disable this ASAP and read up on the risks in 'man xhost'