Shorewall does not start at boot time

I am neither shell scripting nor security guru, but I think that there is an error in the /etc/init.d/shorewall script that installs with the version 3.2.6-2 of Shorewall.

I installed Shorewall using Synaptic today, configured it and tested that I can start it manually. Then I restarted the computer and found out that there are no rules defined in any iptables chain (sudo iptables -L). I used the sudo invoke-rc.d shorewall start command to check what's happening during boot time and I saw the following error:

  Please read about Debian specific customization in
  /usr/share/doc/shorewall/README.Debian.gz.

After a few minutes of checking by trial and error I knew there was a problem with a piece of code right after the # check if shorewall is configured or not comment and after a few more minutes I modified it and the problem was solved. Below is the modified version - the script was looking for a wrong file and checking a non-existent variable.

# check if shorewall is configured or not
if [ -f "/etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf" ]
then
. /etc/shorewall/shorewall.conf
if [ "$STARTUP_ENABLED" != "Yes" ]
then
not_configured
fi
else
not_configured
fi

Neostrada ADSL + Linux + Siemens SpeedStream 4100 modem

If you have a Neostrada ADSL connection and a Siemens SpeedStream 4100 modem, it is really easy to configure it on Linux. You only have to:

1. edit the /etc/network/interfaces file and configure the card connected to the modem (you need to set the IP address, the gateway, the netmask and the broadcast address - your provider should give you all this data)
2. execute /etc/init.d/networking restart

I am by no means a network guru and I cannot exactly explain why it has to be done like this, but my guess is that the modem handles all the PPPoE stuff, so no PPPoE client (like RP-PPPoE) is necessary.

Installing Ubuntu on ASUS A6RP-AP069 notebook (part 3 - WPA)

I don't know why, but WPA doesn't work on Ubuntu out-of-the-box. WEP does and we were using it for some time, but recently we finally decided to switch to WPA.

First we found these instructions, but for some reason they didn't work for us. And even if they did, this method is way too complicated.

After some further searching, we found this post. Really simple and it works! Although, after having followed the steps 1, 2 and 3 listed there, we also had to reboot the machine and add ifup eth1 to /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh file.

Installing Ubuntu on ASUS A6RP-AP069 notebook

There were three problems that me and my girlfriend encountered while installing Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) on ASUS A6RP-AP069 notebook.

1. Starting the installation
   There was no problem to boot the laptop from the Ubuntu CD, it showed the available option, but after choosing any of them it... froze after a few seconds.
   We tried 3 or 4 different version of Ubuntu and Mandriva. Every time it hung as soon as Using hpet for high-res timesource message showed. (It is worth noticing that Ubuntu 6.10 does not show such information to the user by default, while its older version do.)
   We found the solution here - adding hpet=disable to the kernel parameters worked like a charm.
2. Connecting to the wireless network
   Ubuntu correctly detected the wireless card. We entered all necessary configuration parameters (SSID, key, etc.), activated the card and... it couldn't connect to the network no matter how many time we re-checked its configuration and restarted it.
   Finally, we found this post. It's really great! We followed the instructions and the WiFi network was up and running in no time.
3. Enabling sound
   That was the hardest part. Everything looked fine - Ubuntu detected the sound card, Amarok looked like it was playing a song, but... there was no sound. We tried to play files in different formats, we checked the headphones, we found countless posts telling to uncheck some External Amplifier option in KMix, but we found no such option.
   Late at night after a lot of googling I (my girlfriend went to sleep earlier) found this post. Another great post! I recompiled alsa-driver, alsa-lib and alsa-utils packages and the sound problem was gone.
4. Headphones
5. WPA