Hello Alain, I saw many people with same sort of confusion. Though I was one of them... There are two different products: a) SuSEFirewall for ipchains (and SuSEfirewall2 for iptables on kernels > 2.4) Is a complete FW solution you can configure extensively by means of /etc/rc.config.d/firewall.rc.config b) Personal_firewall Is a "boxed" solution for single users that don't want to allow any incoming packets (usual internet modem dial-up users).
Small problem. I have a Postfix servor on a station. One day I decided to try the personal_firewall of SuSE 7.1. I thought to have configured it correctly (allow port 25 ans 110) but impossible to have access to the mail servor. Thus I have to type rcpersonal_firewall stop to be able to use the server.
If you want to open some ports.. then you definetly need to use SuSEfirewall.
In /etc/rc.config I have the line
START_FW = "n"
Yes, this variable sets in /etc/rc.config to start SuSEfirewall. Check configuration file /etc/rc.config.d/firewall.rc.config if it does not work the way you expected. In the other hand, if you are using personal_firewall, this is not the variable to stop it. Look in your /etc/rc.config for ... I do not remember this variable... look for anything about firewall, FW, personal_fw, etc... Hope this helps, Pep.