[ale] Virus scan

[Mike Millson]

I was just curious to know if virus scan software was being used by anyone
for Linux, and if so, what are the circumstances.

My experience in the past w/ McAfee on Windows is that it's like a cheap
radar detector I once owned that went off after I saw the police car! A
waste of money and not very effective compared to other common sense things
like don't drive so fast (or don't open files from strangers).

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-admin at ale.org [mailto:ale-admin at ale.org]On Behalf Of Keith R.
To: ale at ale.org
Watson
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 12:27 PM
To: ale at ale.org; ale at ale.org
Subject: RE: [ale] Virus scan


At 09:07 AM 12/16/2002 -0500, Mike Millson wrote:
>Is it recommended or common practice to run virus scan software on linux
>production servers (e.g. a web server)? I stopped running virus software on
>my windows desktops about 3 years ago because the virus software itself was
>like a virus - buggy, slowing the machine down, causing other apps to
crash.
>I found the virus protection program's ill affects didn't outweigh the
>possible benefits and have never considered them since. Should I be
>considering something like f-prot?
>
>Mike


Mike,

If I understand you question correctly:

1. Best practice is to run anti-virus software on servers.

2. I would presume these are servers that contain files for
    download and that you want to scan the files for viruses.

3. You agree with the best practices but the software you were
    using didn't perform well.

4. Will F-Prot perform better than the other software you used?


It would seem that if you want to scan files for viruses then you should
try a different package than the one you were using. You can get a free
trial of F-Prot and under the right circumstances F-Prot for Linux is free
(see the F-Prot web site for licensing requirements).

Anti-virus software generally only scans for viruses specific to one
platform and one operating system, such as Intel x86/DOS or Intel
x86/Windows 3.1 or Intel x86/Windows 95,98,ME,2K,XP. Most anti-virus
software I have seen for *NIX assumes that you have a *NIX server
containing x86 DOS/Windows files that you want to scan.

Did you want to scan for *NIX viruses/trojans/worms of which there are very
few? Do you want to scan files for other operating systems such as Apple OS
or OSX?

keith
-------------

Keith R. Watson                        GTRI/ITD
Systems Support Specialist III         Georgia Tech Research Institute
keith.watson at gtri.gatech.edu           Atlanta, GA  30332-0816
404-894-0836

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