Securing Ubuntu

ProShield is a
system administration/security program for Ubuntu/Debian GNU/Linux. It
helps insure that your system is secure and up-to-date by checking many
different aspects of your system. Whether you are a Linux novice or a
system administrator with a dozen servers, ProShield is designed to be usable by all. Its main goal is to help secure a newly installed computer, as well as maintain the security of an existing machine. It’s part security and part security administration.

The main features of ProShield are:

    * Helps you backup your system weekly.

    * Checks for new software releases, in order to see if installed software is reasonably up todate.  Smart-suggestion to upgrade if an important package is released.

    * Disk-space check to find any partitions that are 70% full or more.

    * Checks for extra root accounts.

    * Checks account & password files for correct access control permissions.

    * Makes sure a few security-hazardous packages are not installed.

    * Checks to make sure a packet sniffer is not running.

    * Removes unneeded packages from the local package archive.

    * Checks to see if ‘apt’ is fetching unnecessary information when checking for software updates.

    * Makes sure system time is accurate.

    * Checks to make sure the user isn’t logged into the system (GUI) as root.

    * Checks the configuration of the ssh server ([sshd] if installed) for insecure settings.

    * At runtime, ProShield will also check to see if there has been a
new version released, and can download and install it at the user’s
preference.

When the program is done analyzing your system, it displays an “advisory report“, and then (if necessary), guides you through a series of interactive questions to help you solve any problems it found.

ProShield is released as a Debian package, ready for easy installation.  After installation, type “proshield” to start the program (you need to do this in a shell/terminal).

Download the latest version: ProShield v3.8.19

Easy Install:

If you don’t know what a Debian package is, or you’d just like to
install ProShield painlessly right now, you can paste this command into
a shell/terminal: (you should also use this if you intend to install
the ProShield package from the command line, as this method will
resolve dependencies)

wget http://proshield.sf.net/ps-install 

sudo sh ps-install

rm ps-install

OpenOffice 3.0 on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

OpenOffice.org 3   is the leading
open-source office software suite  for word processing, spreadsheets,
presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many
languages  and works on all common computers.
It stores all your data in an international open standard format and
can also read and write files from other common office software
packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for
any purpose.

Best of all, OpenOffice.org 3 can be downloaded and used entirely free
of any licence fees. OpenOffice.org 3 is released under the LGPL
licence. This means you may use it for any purpose – domestic,
commercial, educational, public administration. You may install it on
as many computers as you like. You may make copies and give them away
to family, friends, students, employees – anyone you like.

Installation on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex
To add repositories are going to System -> Administration -> Origins of the software -> Third-party software and add the following lines:

You can also do it from the terminal with the following commands:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list and add the following lines
    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main deb
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main deb-src

Now update your packages list:

    sudo aptitude update

You can now upgrade using the Upgrade Manager or via command line.

    sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

Now, you should have openoffice 3.0 installed on your system.

Five Tweaks for Your New Ubuntu Desktop

Disable or throttle back Tracker indexing

Installed
and running by default on Ubuntu desktops, Tracker is an actually handy
search tool that’s placed, Spotlight-style, in the upper-right taskbar,
giving you quick access to files and folders. The only catch is that
Tracker eats up a good bit of processor power to keep itself current,
and, depending on how you use your system, might not be necessary at
all. The How-To Geek walks through the process of scaling back or disabling Tracker entirely. Looking for a low-power, high-functioning alternative? Try learning the magic of find.

Disable atime to speed up your hard drive

Some older Ubuntu distributions, and other Linux systems, mount hard drives using an atime option. The problem, as noted by Linus Torvalds himself, is that atime writes to the hard disk every time a file is accessed to keep up its indexing records. We’ve detailed how to turn off atime for faster hard drive access, and newer Ubuntu users can go a bit further in disabling the replacement relatime as well—but be sure to back up your original /etc/fstab file, as some applications and services might get cranky without it.

Switch to mirror servers for updates

Every six months or so, a new version of Ubuntu drops. And every six
months, without fail, users looking to download a new CD or upgrade
their systems slam the Ubuntu.com servers, leaving many with huge
download waits, and users just trying to grab the latest updates in the
lurch. Save yourself the cyclical grief, and save Ubuntu’s developers
some hosting costs, by switching to mirror servers for updates.
Universities and Linux groups around the world are happy to dish out
the latest system updates, which are mirrored hastily from Ubuntu’s
servers, and you’ll probably get better speeds finding a nearby host.

Upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3

Ubuntu sticks to a rigid release schedules, so the latest version, 8.10, had to wrap up its software picks before the OpenOffice
project could finalize its 3.0 version. Luckily, it’s not too hard to
put the latest open-source office suite on your desktop, either as a
replacement for the 2.x default or next to it. The Tombuntu blog details the steps, which require only a minimal bit of command line work.

Back up your home folder

The “home” folder in Linux, found at /home/yourusername,
is more than just a stash for MP3s and cat pictures. In hidden files
(named with a . at the start) and specific folders, it’s where most
applications keep your preferences, data files, and other
customizations. Having a backup of your home folder is pretty crucial
to reinstalling a system that went bad, making painless upgrades, and
generally feeling better about your stability. You can kick it
old-school with rsync or hook up an external hard drive, but the recently-opened Dropbox makes it seriously easy and automatic to back up the home folder with a native client application.

Ubuntu Linux’s 8 Million Users

Estimating the usage of most open source programs is difficult, if not impossible. However, it’s important to try to understand the size of the userbase and what their greatest needs are.

InternetNews.com reports that Ubuntu Linux has 8 million active users:

“In terms of numbers we’re very confident this is an 8 million plus user base of active users,” Chris Kenyon, director of business development at Canonical told InternetNews.com. “That is a hard thing to count and there are lots of issues about methodology for counting but I have seen nothing that sheds doubts on that.”

Ubuntu and Canonical are also healthy and growing in terms of their developer communities:

“There are other key metrics that Canonical is keen to point out, among them is their growing headcount of contributors and staff. Kenyon claimed that the number of people that are actually contributing lines of code continues to grow.

“We now have over 400 active contributors,” Kenyon said. “That’s on top of our own internal development team that is now at 120 plus developers.”