Shorewall start fails

[Daniel Lutz]

Binary package hint: shorewall-common

Ubuntu 8.04.2 (Kubuntu)
shorewall-common: 4.0.6-1

During bootup, shorewall can't start because of a bug in /sbin/shorewall.
The log file /var/log/shorewall-init.log contains the following error message at the end:

[...]
Compiling Traffic Control Rules...
Compiling Rule Activation...
Shorewall configuration compiled to /var/lib/shorewall/.start
/var/lib/shorewall/.start: 1804: Syntax error: Missing '))'

The error occurs during calling /var/lib/shorewall/.start. This script uses "/bin/sh" by default. On Ubuntu systems, /bin/sh is a symlink to /bin/dash. The script ".start" seems not to work with dash.

The script /sbin/shorewall calls ".start" directly (${VARDIR}/.start $debugging start), whereas ".restart" is called with $SHOREWALL_SHELL ($SHOREWALL_SHELL ${VARDIR}/.restart $debugging restart). In our case, we have set $SHOREWALL_SHELL to /bin/bash.

I think ".start" should be called the same way as ".restart" (using $SHOREWALL_SHELL).