firestarter start failure?

[Vitorio Okio]

"Robert Holtzman" <holtzm at cox.net> wrote in message 
news:alpine.DEB.1.00.0806192148350.6992 at holtzm-desktop...
> Just had occasion to reboot 8.04 and got a boot message that 
> firestarter
> had failed to start. When the boot was complete I opened firestarter 
> and
> it's status was shown as active.
>
> ps -aux showed:
>
> holtzm    7005  0.8  0.6  33268 12612 ?        S    21:54   0:00 
> gksu
> /usr/sbin/firestarter
> root      7006  0.7  0.7  46048 15364 ?        Ssl  21:54   0:00
> /usr/sbin/firestarter
>
> I didn't understand the explanation in the ps man page of the STAT 
> column
> codes (S and Ssl).
>
> Anyone want to give me some pointers?
>

I see Firestarter being reported "failed" every single time I start 
either my desktop or laptop.  But as soon the system started 
Firestarter is always up and running.

I think the reason is quite simple and obvious.   The system attempts 
to start Firestarter before the network interface Firestarter is 
configured to is up.  This makes Firestarter rightfully to fail. 
After the system started and the required network interface is up, 
Firestarter starts automatically.

It's very easy to observe on a laptop run wireless: the network 
wireless applet works to establish connection, and as soon it is done 
Firestarter starts as well.

To make it even more obvious make Firestarter GUI to start on boot. 
It will pop up reporting failure because of the required interface is 
down.  The Firestarter GUI will show you a big "brick" button at this 
moment.  Then in a second when the network interface is up and a 
network connection is established, the "brick" button in Firestarter 
GUI changes to "arrow" button automatically.

So, I think it is a correct behavior and you have nothing to worry 
about.