Firestarter conflicts with ufw

[bodhi.zazen]

I know there are a few bug reports with firestarter and I am sorry if this is a duplicate (I did not see this exact description when I searched LP bugs for firestarter).

There are several issues with firestarter but the most common problem is that it conflicts with ufw.

ufw is installed by default and so when people add firestarter there are no warnings that it conflicts with ufw, and ufw is not removed.

This is most often caught by users noticing "fail" errors as their system boots.

The result of this conflict is that there are no rules in iptables, so users *think* they have installed and configured a "firewall" , but ufw and firestarter conflict, and after a fresh boot "sudo iptables -L -v" is blank. I am sure some users will complain that this a security issue as the result is a permissive firewall. I did not mark it as such as I am not sure it is truly a "vulnerability" , but I could see some people feel it is.

Worse, when removing firestarter, without the --purge option, the conflicting firestarter config files remain in place.

The only solution I know of is to re-install firestarter and then purge it.

Example (there are other threads on the forums if you search, I did not list them all):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1221868

I respectfully suggest considering adjusting the dependencies of firestarter / ufw (and other gui config tools) so that the do not conflict as that when they are removed config files are removed without the need to "purge".

[Automaton26 (automaton26)]

Also, it would be better if gufw was provided with the default ubuntu installation, then users would be less likely to try out these conflicting firestarter and guarddog applications.

Thanks !

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

This package has been removed from Ubuntu. Closing all related bugs.