Testing ClamAV – the opensource Antivirus

What, you mean they have Open Source Antivirus?

So in the open source world the biggest project is ClamAV – not very exciting marketing speak but … there it is, often open source is like that. Just quietly moving along, run by community … there are often paid people if a project gets big enough.

So – say you aren’t using Linux/Unix — and you don’t feel like “compiling your source code” – well there are builds of ClamAV for other operating systems. I’m going to try it out – watch this space.

https://www.clamav.net/

Why am I not going to use a commercial product … well, because antivirus is only a piece of the puzzle and I get a bit sick of “marketingware” rather than software. Nagging you (nagware) to buy it, canceling upgrades if you don’t pay. Some sites are better off if the software will stay installed indefinitely and not keep going to a new version or expiring constantly. Sounds wrong because marketing people want you to think all these new versions and updates are necessary, sometimes they make things worse and downgrade you so you have to pay more to get back functions.

So – as a researcher every year or two I like to test the state of the free/open-source/sponsor only type offerings from the open source community. I believe that ultimately open source makes more progress than paid software for well know same old solutions … we don’t need to keep paying for wordprocessors surely. So we shouldn’t for many other types of software – unless we want to reward innovation.

However – on initial inspection – its more of a command line library that needs additional software to integrate it into Windows. Not really ready to give clients. No wonder its not really making a big impact in mainstream consumer antivirus world … but it wouldn’t take much. I found other IT consultants saying the same thing – “don’t bother with it”. Yet, i’m determined to ” bother with it”. Looking into documentation there is a windows installer that only appears linked there.

https://www.clamav.net/documents/installing-clamav-on-windows

https://blog.andornot.com/blog/How-to-set-up-ClamAV-as-a-Windows-Service-to-scan-file-streams-on-demand/

As well as other unofficial guides such as the latter link above. So as usual with open source software, where there is a will there is a way. Generally you want to avoid trying to write your own installer before you find how it has been done successfully or just to avoid writing code.

Have you ever “sudo apt upgrade”d?

I can’t explain how much easier it is than attempting to upgrade ALL your applications and system. Many systems will update software but it’s generally piecemeal

If you have …. (what I said in the title)’d then you are using some form of linux, most likely debian or ubuntu flavour.

The hardest thing about linux is that you probably can’t get where you want without typing in a few commands. That tends to lead to learning, googling and mostly just copying the instructions – its how everyone evolves.

I’ve been on and off with linux since it’s inception and yes, I was using computers well before linux and was there watching as it emerged as a barely usable joke project “lets make our own new, fresh unix operating system” but people worked and worked. Then it existed and software was immediately available – from unix but normal users don’t care. So unix grew and one of the things that grew from a unix clone was … Mac OS.

Yes that system became very unstable and they sacked Steve Jobs. He returned later with a unix clone (mach/darwin) called NeXT and they renamed it … Mac OS 10 …. and from then they had 10.1 … up to todays 10.whatever – who cares. Main thing – its like linux … you can get something like mac for free and run it on your windows computer. You can even make it look like a mac “look and feel” … and in the end some things take a lot of time, they aren’t as professional and slick as the commercial software world of Mac and Windows … at least not always, some are though, or even better in their own way.

The times are a changin’ and you can upgrade EVERYTHING with one little bit of typing into the CLI (command line interface) … and then that effort you invested pays back. You start to realize … oh, maybe I can leave windows and all its hacking, security and issues behind. I can work with a system designed to help me instead of exploit me. Frankly the same goes for mac – and on the iphone, the android phone its all based on a unix variant of some kind (effectively) which they just stole your CLI from you. CLI … is your friend, even if he is ugly, nerdy and you only approach him with fear. Yet you have a bit of a conversation – learn the words he understands and he becomes a great buddy – slowly you start to understand that windows aren’t always better and reaching for the mouse can be bothersome when you are already sitting there typing in a few commands.

Choosing a remote support tool.

When you need help, you might be adept but out of your field or a complete duffer. Still, you can install tools and invite friends to help you, let them navigate you through the twists and turns. Even the easy tools can be a little intimidating but you know, if you are in a situation where you need help then unless someone is on-hand you are going to waste a lot of time and money when you could be making it easy for someone to assist you.

If someone is your friend its likely they don’t want to drive over just to walk you through something that might turn out to be basic. On the other hand if they are a computer junkie they might be more than happy to work with you by seeing your screen. You share what you can see, and even give control over the mouse and keyboard as if they were sitting there with you. Of course, if you found this blog … 1) I’ve sent it to you because you are someone I’m trying to assist myself, 2) You already know what remote support is and you searched for “choosing + remote support” and are looking for tools.

Some of the tools want to give you way more than you need, charge you for a huge subscription fee and harass you forever until you cancel the account. Others are freeware/shareware or free to trial. I feel that it’s always best to start with free/share/trial-ware because if you develop this habit you might accumulate vast savings and end up saving more than money, but a lot of trouble subscribing, fixing out of date accounts or just dealing with crappy changes designed to charge you for a product you paid for already. Remote support technology has existed for many years and for it to earn your payment it has to be very slick and useful in some way that you don’t need.

I actually only started using Teamviewer recently because I’d known about it but I was fine using VNC or logmein. There you go – top 3 in one sentance

VNC – which stands for virtual network computing is an old protocol. It has been implemented by different programmer/developer groups. I recommend TightVNC if you understand IP addresses and networks but if you want something with stronger security just check out other options like the older VNC product RealVNC

Teamviewer – if you have a client that doesn’t understand those things and you need to find them and connect. In the early days I avoided it because people got hacked through it too often so I just didn’t like the whole smell of that. Its been years – now its Teamviewer 14 software – it seems to have decent security features after all those years of issues.

Logmein – if you want to build a whole console of tools and computers this one might be for you but beware the charges really start to build up. I would say its not worth the price they put on it, but the price is set because it does work and work well. Especially deploying links to users who don’t know much what to do.

So, you want a mail server

In the early days I had mail servers – I mean I was using email on old days unix when it was NEW at university. I was using fidonet based on phone calls between modems – yes this is pre-internet at home. I ran all kinds of netware, compuserve, aol, microsoft exchange, postfix, sendmail … and eventually I outsourced it all to Gmail for a non-profit and had 1000 users and our domain pointed there.

Look at this image on top of this blog, its an old Mac SE someone is making connect to internet. That was a “newer” computer. As for email it hasn’t actually changed a huge amount since those days of the 80s. Recently I built the latest version of a very old mail server “postfix” – yes I’m back but I’m not going to sendmail (too old school but still used!). Its command line work, linux … reminds me of a colleague who said “command line is how computers really work” as if mice and windows aren’t. He was wrong, they are just different ways of doing the same thing – triggering something to run some code, script or macro. Clicking something or typing a command … not that big of a difference. Truth is that a good admin can do things fast with the command line, doesn’t have to search around as much as a window based user. However it depends how well set up the window user and how well designed his software tools are. I digress … so, you want a mail server

Option 1: You want your own domain email – you know what a “domain” and website is. So you go to a company like Godaddy that appears high on a google search. You will get a mail server … of sorts, but good luck getting service or control if it doesn’t give you what you want. It saves time at the outset but becomes more and more of a limitation or legacy problem if you grow to use it for a many accounts etc. Maybe it gets hacked because nobody maintains the server … seems to happen a lot to people who become my customers looking for the solution.

Option 2: Build it yourself. If you have the time and interest I can share what I know, freely – really – the community of users/admins understand. You can google, youtube and find many guides but its amazing how many of them don’t work or turn out to be very misguided. The person knows a lot but still .. they make a frankenserver and if you copy them you might be wishing you didn’t. So you have to resign to doing it a few times until you find a guide that is up to date and written by a real expert. I recently went through this one after looking around a while.

https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix-dovecot-and-mysql/#test-email-with-mailutils

Option 3: Hire someone else to do it … like me or one of many admins you might find. Choose wisely.

Option 4: Collaborate with someone like me to use their server so that you get a best of both worlds – they built it, they maintain it for themselves and you get something almost the same as Option 3.

Option 5: Give up and discover you could have used your google account or other similar thing to get everything you needed and you just had not dug deep enough to see all the power you already had. Realize that you might even get a domain and use it with googles email but your own me@example.com web address. This full circle thing is not a bad place to arrive – it means you have re-evaluated.

More options – let me know … especially if you want to hire me 🙂