Ubuntu Desktop Security Primer

You weren't born yesterday. You know what a firewall is. You know what anti-virus software is. You know what a man page is, and you've Googled more times than you can count. Let's keep this simple, shall we?

Firewall

Ubuntu includes ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall) by default. And by default, it is turned off. Turn it on:

$ sudo ufw enable
Firewall is active and enabled on system startup

Congratulations. Your computer is now wrapped in electronic cellophane.

Anti-Virus

Most viruses are still targeted at Windows, but the paranoid can never be too careful. Here is the version for those with short attention spans.

• Install it:

  $ sudo apt-get install clamav

• Update it:

  $ sudo freshclam

• Run it:

  $ sudo clamscan / -ir --exclude-dir=^/sys --exclude-dir=^/proc --detect-pua

If you'd like a GUI, check out ClamTk.

Xubuntu Tip: Switch Users without Logging Out

I've recently installed Xubuntu on a couple of my computers, and generally I prefer it over stock Ubuntu. I had almost forgotten how nice having launchers on the desktop was. Almost. One feature I missed from Ubuntu, though, was being able to switch between different logged in users. With the default Xubuntu setup, you have to log out before you can log into a different account. Problem solved.

• $ sudo apt-get install xfswitch-plugin

• Add User Switching plugin to one of your panels.

Nice.

Maven 3: Default Values for Mojo Parameters that are Collections

I love my custom Maven mojos (or plugins). However, I recently ran into a situation where I needed a parameter that was a list of archive types (zip, tar, etc.), and I wanted to specify some reasonable default. Have you ever tried this by specifying a default-value or an expression? After searching for about an hour, I have come to the conclusion that the designers of Maven didn't thing this through all the way.

Not to fear though! There is a way to get this to work, and I like it so much I think I will start using the "hack" in preference to the "right way."

The trick is to specify a default value for the variable in Java. Don't use default-value or expression at all. If the user doesn't override the value, the variable doesn't get set, so it just picks up the default value you've assigned.

The second part of the trick is to document your default settings in the JavaDoc. Since you aren't specifying the value as part of the @parameter annotation, the site-doc report and help won't pick up the value you've assigned.

Here is an example.

/**
 * Types of archives to create. Any of <code>zip</code>, 
 * <code>tar</code>, <code>tar.gz</code>, <code>tar.bz2</code>.
 * <br><strong>Default</strong>: <tt>["zip", "tar.gz"]</tt>
 * @parameter 
 */
protected List<String> types = Arrays.asList("zip", "tar.gz");

One thing to note is that this will only work for constants. Any default values that have to be pulled from the project context (such as project file paths) are going to require an expression. This can't be helped. Those values have to be injected after the plugin is constructed.