After nearly two weeks of agony trying to figure out why my thin clients simply wouldn't boot (and what on earth it could have to do with Firestarter), I emailed an IT consultant (Gerald Butler - <a href="http://bffoss.com/bff/">http://bffoss.com/bff/</a> to be precise) and asked for a professional consultation. He didn't have any time for that, but he still offered some ideas, one of which was to look at my switch (a simply 5-port Gigafast) as it sounded like it could be blocking ICMP packets. Thinking about that, I walked over to my switch and pulled its adapter plug, figuring I'd reset it.<br>
That did it. Instant network! I still don't know exactly what went wrong. But then, I don't really much care either.<br>Thanks again for all the help from this forum...I've learned an enormous amount about Edubuntu from every step!<br>
David<br>