Finally got OpenVPN and Firestarter to play nice

My last post indicated there were web pages out there you could refer to to get Firestarter and OpenVPN to work together.

However the following link provided me with the details for MY situation (your own may obviously be different)

http://ignore-your.tv/2006/08/03/openvpn-and-firestarter/

So, for me I had to update the user-pre file with details of my tap interface. Thus I added the following:-

$IPT -A INPUT -i tap+ -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -o tap+ -j ACCEPT

To find out if you must add details for a tap or tun interface, run the command 'ifconfig -a' from your command line and look for the 'tap0' or 'tun0' (or similar text). Note, this of course will only show up IF your VPN is already up and running - but not working (due to Firestarter ;-)

Linux kernel and Linksys USB wireless adapter

I had problems with my Linksys WUSB54GS wireless adapter when I tried to use it with Ubuntu (v9.10 Karmic Koala and v10.04 Lucid Lynx) and Fedora (Fedora Core 2 and Fedora 12).

Sometimes it would work and find my network. Other times it would not. This seemed to be related to issues with its driver (rndis).

I purchased a new TP-Link wireless adapter from e-bay. This worked straight out of the box with Ubuntu 10.04. This uses the rt73 driver (I think).

Anyway, the up-shot is I am finally certain that I have a wireless adapter I can reply on and I can recommend it - for Ubuntu 10.04 at least. I am going to re-install Fedora 12 and see what happens there.

Disabling Broadcast SSID does not work on Fedora with LinkSys WUSB54GS

I normally disable the broadcast of the SSID of my wireless betwork as set up on my LinksysWAG54GS router. Turns out that this behaviour is not supported by the driver used by my USB modem (a Linksys WUSB54GS) on Fedora.

Interestingly, some people think that using what I thought was a fairly obvious security feature is pretty pointless.

Have a look here for the fact that WUSB54GS and disabling SSID does not work on Fedora/Linux. It's in black and white under the 'What does not' work section.

As a result, consider upping your WPA password to greater than 20 characters to make it useful!