Hi there, On Wed, 18 Dec 2013, David Grant wrote:
I can barely understand the home page.
You haven't made it clear which home page you mean.
I don't know if I use Unix
Maybe ClamAV is not for you. [1]
(I'm using an iMac).
ClamAV is probably not for you. [2]
I was told that ClamAV was the best virus protection
Whoever told you that, don't listen to them any more. There is no 'best' virus protection, except perhaps using Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD or similar. Do you know how many anti-virus packages there are Out There? Did your adviser even ask you if you were using a Windows machine? Did he point you to something like Jotti's malware scan? http://virusscan.jotti.org/en-gb Do you know the differences between viruses, ransomware, worms, trojan horses, rootkits, keyloggers, dialers, spyware, adware, malicious BHOs and rogue security software in general? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware
so I signed up ? or did I download?
How are we supposed to know?! :)
In any case, every day at the same time my work is interrupted by a report from Console.
Mr. Esler already asked you about this. Mr. Esler is, well, very polite because he works for Sourcefire, the people who are (now) primarily responsible for ClamAV. He's saying he doesn't know what you're talking about because ClamAV itself doesn't do what you describe. In fact, unless you tell it what to do after you've done the installation, it does nothing at all.
Is there a really simple explanation of ClamAV somewhere?
ClamAV is not a simple product, but in simple terms it is a kit of tools which can be used in a variety of ways. ClamAV is supplied with documentation. You should read it, but it does make some assumptions about your level of skill. Exactly how you use it will depend on your circumstances. For example, I use it to scan for email-borne garbage on the mail servers which I run. Because my own machines are Linux boxes, and I run no Windows machines at all, I have no great interest in scanning them for viruses -- my machines are, to all intents and purposes, not affected by them. However it really wouldn't do for one of my people unwittingly to forward any malicious software to someone outside our organization, so there is an incentive to scan both incoming and outgoing mail. The third-party databases which ClamAV can use to scan email messages for things like 'phishing' make it much more useful to me than if it could only scan for viruses. See also [2].
Can I stop that daily interruption of Console, but still keep the virus protection?
Yes. [3] Notes: [1] Open Source is as much about helping yourself, by doing some homework, as it is about asking people what they think you did because you have no idea. There is a (to be honest, bewildering) amount of information about Macs available to you for the price of a search engine query. This will tell you for example about the operating system that is used. If you don't know what an operating system is, now might be a good time to look at some articles on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS [2] There are a couple of million viruses in the wild which currently affect Windows machines. I don't know how many there are currently for the various Macs, but I think it's in the order of a single digit. [3] You can do whatever you like of course, but you have some work to do before you will know how to do it. As Mr. Varnell has explained, here is probably the wrong place for questions about ClamXAV. -- 73, Ged. _______________________________________________ Help us build a comprehensive ClamAV guide: https://github.com/vrtadmin/clamav-faq http://www.clamav.net/support/ml
