Please describe the problem:
The firewall startup script /etc/firestarter/firestarter.sh relies on commands like
MASK=`/sbin/ifconfig $IF | grep Mas | cut -d : -f 4`
to detect the state of the network interface
but on a system with default locale zh_CN.UTF8, the output from ifconfig will use Chinese to represent the keys like  subnet mask, then this command will fail and set MASK to empty string, this cause the script to abort with a message like
External Network Interface eth0 not ready

Steps to reproduce:
1. set the system's default locale to zh_CN.UTF8
2. after log into the GNOME desktop
3. stop the firewall
4. try to start it up again


Actual results:


Expected results:


Does this happen every time?
yes

Other information:
The firewall can be started successfully at system boot time, I guess this is because at that time, the locale has not be set to the one specified by the user, and is still the generic C or POSIX
but after GNOME login, the locale is guarenteed to be set to the one specified by the user, and the firewall startup script will need to be executed when the GUI monitoring tool is started or the firewall configuration is changed and need a restart.
a simple workaround does exist, just add LANG=C at the beginning of the /etc/firestarter/firestarter.sh script. At least, this works for me.