HOWTO: Load Firestarter (Firewall) when session starts.

[Nano]

These two simple steps will allow you to start Firestarter (Firewall) automatically right after you login. (Only for Gnome.)

My system is entirely in Spanish so some translations might not be correct.

First of all, since Firestarter requires sudo privileges to be started, we will add it to /etc/sudoers:

export EDITOR=gedit && sudo visudo

and add the following string at the bottom:

username ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/sbin/firestarter

where "username" is YOUR OWN user name.

Now let's add it to the session.
Open "System->Preferences->Sessions" and click the tab "Start up programs" (the last).
Click the "Add button" and add the following string:

gksudo /usr/sbin/firestarter

This is all. Next time you start

[XDevHald]

If you log out of X and notice it says: "You must have root privilages to run FireStarter" then you need to se the order for the program to run in.


Do this by going to:

System > Preferences > Sessions > Startup Programs

And set the order of it to 20. If this doesn't work, check your User Group privilages and see if you're set in the admin also known as adm in your user groups settings.

Great work Nano! helped a lot

[pseudonym]

You would do this only to autoload the Firestarter GUI upon login, right? Because according to the Firestarter documentation ('Persistence of the Firewall') it should load during bootup and run 'in the background'. A message about starting Firestarter appears during startup, plus you can run 'sudo /etc/init.d/firestarter status' to check that it's running. Unless it's not running the way it should if you don't have the GUI enabled?....

[Nano]

You would do this only to autoload the Firestarter GUI upon login, right? Because according to the Firestarter documentation ('Persistence of the Firewall') it should load during bootup and run 'in the background'. A message about starting Firestarter appears during startup, plus you can run 'sudo /etc/init.d/firestarter status' to check that it's running. Unless it's not running the way it should if you don't have the GUI enabled?....

That's right, it's to load the Firestarter GUI.
I always run it minimized to monitor when I have recurring hits from suspicious ips in order to black list them.

[bored2k]

Note: for those wanting to start FS minimized, add this to ur sessions startup:
gksudo /usr/sbin/firestarter --start-hidden (instead of gksudo /usr/sbin/firestarter)

http://www.fs-security.com/docs/faq.php

[NateC]

I simply use "sudo firestarter" and it starts up fine with no problems when I login.

[optik]

Huh.... Isnt that a tad insecure? Making it so that your user doesnt have to use a pass for sudo?

[bored2k]

Huh.... Isnt that a tad insecure? Making it so that your user doesnt have to use a pass for sudo?

No. You're just making firestarter not use sudo. Everything else still needs it.

[Lunde]

You would do this only to autoload the Firestarter GUI upon login, right? Because according to the Firestarter documentation ('Persistence of the Firewall') it should load during bootup and run 'in the background'. A message about starting Firestarter appears during startup, plus you can run 'sudo /etc/init.d/firestarter status' to check that it's running. Unless it's not running the way it should if you don't have the GUI enabled?....

The internet connection sharing does not work until the gui is started. Strange...

[mulperi]

Isn't firestarted actually only a GUI for iptables?

I read somewhere that by modifying the kernel you could get pop-up windows when some application tries to "call home" in the background. Does anyone have a clue on how to do this?

//mulperi