how to start firestarter automatically at boot

[Peter Garrett]

See my answer below. (Just as an aside, the convention in mailing lists like this is to post at the bottom, or intersperse comments in the quoted text.  makes the thread easier to read and follow.)

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 18:49:00 -0700 (PDT)
sahutoglu sonmez <sahutsonmez at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thanks Yannick,
>  after starting the system I don't see firestarter
> running when I check system monitor. Does it mean that
> it is running but I just can't see it or actually it
> is not running? 

The firestarter that you *see* is not the actual firewall: it's a pretty face with buttons for the underlying "program", which is called "iptables". (This is a bit of an oversimplification but close enough)

If you type

 cat /etc/init.d/firestarter 

in a terminal, you will see some script text - this script is what *starts* the firewall on each boot automatically. In other words, the firewall is activated on boot, but as you say above, you can't "see" it. Or more accurately, you can't see the monitoring/ configuring "front end" for it. Don't let this worry you. If you go to an online firewall checking site you will see that it works fine, even when you can't "see" it. (So you don't have to run the firestarter GUI as such to have the "firewalling effect". It has already started from the init scripts anyway)

>is there another way to check if it
> runs automatically after boot? 

It will unless you disable the startup script I mentioned above.

>I tried "gnome-sudo
> firestarter" in system/preferences/session.

You don't really need to do this - see above.

> but then it asked my the root's password. it's ok but
> I would like it to start by itself.

It is possible to get the GUI for firestarter to start by itself, but I think it would involve editing the sudoers file with the visudo command, to make the GUI for firestarter run without a password. Unless you are comfortable with editing system files, this might not (yet) be a good idea for you. Also depending on who uses your system, it might not be very secure.

Personally, I suggest you just start the GUI when you want to check something, or reconfigure your firewalling.

> Thanks again.
> Sonmez 

Feel free to ask if this isn't clear. I just typed it off the top of my head, as it were :)

Peter