On Thu, 20 Dec 2001 at 13:43, Rikki T. Vizcarra wrote: > Which do you think is the best (free of course) antivirus program for > Linux?
Note that AMaViS is -not- an antivirus program. It's free, but it's not an antivirus program. It's simply a handler, a wrapper, that integrates standard file-sweeping type antivirus programs like McAfee's uvscan or Sophos sweep with your MTA. If you're unhappy with the way AMaViS handles its job as a wrapper, you may want to check out Mailscanner <http://www.mailscanner.info/>. Fellow PLUGger Michael Chaney uses this and it seems is quite happy with it. > Now you may ask why I'm asking about this... It' just that I tried using > AMAVIS (not the perl compilation) with McAfee Antivirus for my SMTP on > three (3) different servers using RH6.2, RH7.0 and RH7.1 but it seems > there is a bug with the McAfee Scanner. It keeps on trying to open > external drives (ex: CDROM, Floppy...) everytime it scans for viruses. > And since I'm testing it to filter virus mails, and having about an > average of 30 outgoing and incoming emails every minute, you could see > the overhead delay of the mails since everytime the scanner runs it > tries first to open the floppy and cdrom drive. For what it's worth I'm using amavis-perl-11 and McAfee's uvscan and am not running into this device-opening problem. Although there is a significant overhead impact with using such file-sweeping antivirus programs because obviously you launch the thing once for every email. I felt the impact of this when I wrote a mass mailing engine in PHP4. My first attempt used the standard mail() function and as you can expect, each and every copy of my standard email was scanned by AMaViS-perl and uvscan. Ouch. My second attempt bypassed the virus scanning via the special port that Postfix listens to locally, which doesn't go through AMaViS anymore (this is the port that AMaViS sends its checked mail through). > Now I'm looking for an alternative virus scanner. I believe a lot of > people here is using Sophos (which is bundled with RH7.2). Sophos is -BUNDLED- with RedHat 7.2 ?!?!?!? I don't think so. Or if it is, not with the standard distribution but with the commercial distribution that comes with various non-free (neither as speech nor beer) programs. > I have seen a lot of good reviews about it but haven't tried it. Sophos > people called me and gave me a quotation for their software but the > price is too high for me. While we're at it... are there other programs > out there like AMAVIS?? Didn't you pay for your McAfee uvscan? It's not free either. And AMaViS on its own can't do any scanning. > or better yet... let's rephrase my question... > What is the best (and free) antivirus for an SMTP Gateway/Server? I only know of the Open AntiVirus project <http://www.openantivirus.org/>. Note that I haven't really researched on this, much less tried/used it. If you have a busy mail server, though, you may want to check out the prices of programs like Kaspersky Anti-Virus <http://www.kaspersky.com/> or maybe that anti-virus program that the Asia-Pacific College uses. Or maybe something like TrendMicro's VirusWall which even takes things further as to work with firewalls and not just mail servers. --> Jijo -- Federico Sevilla III :: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Network Administrator :: The Leather Collection, Inc. GnuPG Key: http://jijo.leathercollection.ph/jijo.gpg _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
