If you re-read that section you will see that the point they are making is
that the operation of the firewall is independent of the display of a tray
icon. The icon is useful, but not essential. It's there to remind you that
the firewall is working and to allow you to change the settings, including
disabling it.

No firewall is installed automatically when Ubuntu is set up. Perhaps it
should be, but it isn't. After you install Firestarter, or any other
firewall, it can be either enabled or disabled. In some cases there is a
tray icon and in others there is not - even though it is running. In the
latter case it is configured using the command line interface.

Ufw is just another program (as i was told) that configures your firewall.
Whether you use ufw or firestarter or any of the other apps to configure the
firewall, the result will be the same- you have a configured firewall. The apps
do not need to be active for the firewall to work. Once it is configured, you
would only need to run one of these programs if you want to change settings of
the firewall.

https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/keeping-safe/C/index.html

OK well I found this documentation. When you close down gufw and start it back
up, the firewall is showing as OFF. It doesnt say how to keep the program
running as a startup application either, nor are there options in the gufw to
keep it running. I am aware however of starup apps but what could I do to ensure
it turns on everytime automatically? What has everyone else done and how do they
know its working?

i just found this too https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UFW

home64@ubuntu64:~$ sudo ufw default deny
Default incoming policy changed to 'deny'
(be sure to update your rules accordingly)
home64@ubuntu64:~$ sudo ufw enable
Firewall is active and enabled on system startup
home64@ubuntu64:~$ sudo ufw status
Status: active
home64@ubuntu64:~$ sudo ufw status
Status: active
home64@ubuntu64:~$ sudo ufw status
Status: active
home64@ubuntu64:~$

Any technically advanced people here able to confirm my firewall is now working
and theres nothing else for an ordinary user to do?? There's a lot of reading
here and I can remember the days of Mandrake where I just clicked enable
firewall in the MCC.

ok after a reboot sudo ufw status said it was not running.

There is a GUI for UFW called GUFW. UFW is installed by default but the GUI
is not. It may be helpful to those who want to configure UFW without typing
in commands.

I really thought once one of these apps configured your IP tables,
they were up and good no matter what -unless you turned them off. Can
anyone say if that is correct?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IptablesHowTo <--- this page has a script
on down which it says is to make sure your ip tables are active on
startup...?

And here I thought I was all firewalled up...

Opening up the two programs (gufw) or firestarter) shows the firewall was turned
off on my pc after I had turned them off and then on, plus running the command
in terminal shows it was off after i rebooted - even though it said it would be
a startup (or implied).

I'm really going out on a limb here as I've had limited experience and less
success with firewalls... but here goes.

Iptables is the underlying set of routines that actually implements the
firewall. It is a work of genius and very hard for us ordinary folks to
fully understand. It is a fantastically versatile and capable programme
which must be completely configured from the command line, it's native
interface. Most people prefer to us a graphical front end.

Once iptables is set up the graphical interface doesn't matter. It can even
be removed, provided that iptables is set up to start at boot and is doing
what you want it to do in managing input and output. Auto-starting iptables
has nothing to do with firestarter etc. after they have set it up.

In my experience any number of reboots always left iptables firmly in
control. Having had to use the CLI method when I unintentionally blocked all
net and internet access I would never go back to command line configuration
by choice! The manuals are available online but are lengthy and highly
technical. Once it was blocking internet access the only way to install
graphical tools, which were not in the apt cache, was to unblock it using
the native CLI commands. Could it be that what was showing as "off" was not
iptables, and therefore your firewall, but the graphical interface, which
you don't need once you have the firewall working properly?

I've stated CLI tells me it is off..........

I've just looked at the iptables commands listed in iptables -h and I can't
find one that tells whether it is on or off. Could you please tell me what
you typed to find out that it is off?