[Wolves] Wolves Digest, Vol 298, Issue 8-Jenette

[Dave Morley]

On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 00:30 +0100, Adam Sweet wrote:
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> JENETTE PALMER wrote:
> > It might be you that thinks I am bit scary not the other way round-you
> > might be the ones to run off if I come to your meetings!
> 
> You haven't seen how ugly we are...
> 
> > Anyway more
> > seriously is there anyone who could tell me how to make the update
> > manager stop updating the same 91 updates all by itself!
> 
> Not really without seeing what's happening. If you use apt-get on the
> command line there are 2 steps to go through. The first gets the latest
> list of software packages available and the next installs any updates
> for what you already have installed.
> 
> Linux separates users for security, you have normal users like you or I
> who have restricted access to the system for safety and you have the
> root user, who is all powerful and can do anything to the system. As
> normal users don't have full access to do anything they choose on a
> system, you can temporarily run a command as root by starting it with
> the sudo command, so the 2 commands I was talking about are:
> 
> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get upgrade
> 
> As I said, the first one refreshes the list of available software and
> the second installs any newer versions of what you already have installed.
> 
> Try those 2 commands in a terminal and if it doesn't work, copy whatever
> it says and paste it into an email to the mailing list and we'll see if
> we can work out why it's not working.
> 
> > Also can anyone
> > explain how clamv actually does anything!
> 
> ClamAV isn't like a Windows style AV engine in so much that it isn't
> constantly running in the background and therefore it doesn't do the
> on-access style scanning of files as you open them which is probably why
> it isn't working the way you think it should. ClamAV is normally either
> run manually to scan a particular file or directory, or it is glued into
> a mail server application to scan emails for viruses.
> 
> To scan a file manually, try the following:
> 
> clamscan filename
> 
> of course swap the word 'filename' with the name of the file to scan.
> Alternatively, to scan a directory try the following:
> 
> clamscan -r ~
> 
> The ~ symbol means your user's home directory. Every user has their own
> home directory and it is similar to My Documents under Windows. If your
> username is jenette, your home directory would be /home/jenette but the
> ~ is like a shortcut that means the same thing. You could just as easily
> typed:
> 
> clamscan -r /home/jenette
> 
> or for some other directory:
> 
> clamscan -r directoryname
> 
> The -r means to do it recursively, which means scan every file in every
> directory which is underneath the directory you specified. In this case
> you told it to scan everything underneath your /home/jenette.
> 
> Does that make sense? If not, just ask.
> 
> In any case, there isn't any real need to run an AV scanner under Linux
> unless you are using it to protect Windows users. There aren't really
> any real Linux viruses in the same way that there are for Windows.
> That's not to say that Linux is bullet proof, but there just aren't the
> same threats to Linux as there are for Windows and Windows viruses don't
> work under Linux. If you wanted to scan files under Linux before you
> open them under Windows, just to be safe, then that makes sense, or as I
> said before, if you were running a mail server or a file server for
> Windows users then that would make sense too, but for your average Linux
> desktop system, there's really no need. Admittedly that might not always
> be the case but it is at the moment.
> 
> You don't need to defragment your hard disk under Linux either.
> Anti-virus and disk defragging are pretty common things that Windows
> users have to think about that Linux users don't.
> 
> Linux can seem pretty complicated and confusing at the beginning, but
> only because you are used to something different. However, Linux is far
> better at telling you what went wrong than Windows as pretty much
> everything is logged under the /var/log/ directory.
> 
> In any case, you're in quite a unique position compared to those of us
> who have been around a while, you get to start at the beginning and see
> all the things that should be easy or obvious, which we are used to
> ignoring or working around without thinking about it. It would be
> interesting to hear what you find difficult.

Or if you would like to get off the command line you can use clamtk.
-- 
Seek That Thy Might Know

http://www.davmor2.co.uk
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