> Thank you! I tried to open them, by the way, in gedit, but they were > empty. I'm just worried because I downloaded them. I really hope they're > not doing my computer any harm. The sender doesn't understand it either. > I'll look into it. >
The bottom line is that malware on Linux is quite rare - most problematic things are root kits: viruses and the like (as you understand it from the Windows world) are virtually non existent. (There's no way I'm going to give anyone a 100% surety on that because someone is bound to come up with an example.) You will not - and I'll stick my neck out on that - will not cause any problems by looking at a file. You will need to run the file either as a shell script or an executable in order for it to even come close to causing a problem. If you are running as a normal user and not root, then the malware will not be able to alter system files. And you must never, ever, ever, run things like mail clients, browsers, or anything that touches internet things as root. One thing you also must remember about Linux (or any Unix) is that the file extension is meaningless. It is a construct left over from DOS days. In Linux an executable file doesn't have to be called x.exe, a document doesn't have to be called x.doc and a data file doesn't have to be called x.dat. They can be called by those names, but that is purely for the user; the system, by and large, doesn't take any notice of it. If you want to find out what a file contains use the 'file' command - so something like file attachment.dat So, for example, I have two identical files - 'basic.ics' and 'basic'. file gives: $ file basic.ics basic.ics: vCalendar calendar file $ file basic basic: vCalendar calendar file If you run file on a something you don't know and it comes up as : $ file t t: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=e2043d6d8b73642f4d427021aacda4480dcb6311, not stripped Then I would be suspicious of it - don't run it to find out what it does! But this is getting far away from Evolution now. P. _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list