Question for Clam users

[Evert Ford]

My 2 cents worth.

ClamAV is Open Source Software.  As such, it would tend to have an
accelerated development cycle in comparison to other Anti-virus software.
The new engine releases may relate to a new feature that you may not
necessarily need.

As with any open source software, i grabbed a stable release and made sure
the updates work.  I keep a general eye on the features added to new
versions, and when new features come into a stable release that are
desirable, i'll upgrade.

Or, if the updates quit working, or Clamav quits doing a good job catching
viruses, i'll look at upgrading.

With most propietary software, new engine releases are critical because they
are directed at specific new viruses out there.  This isn't necessarily
going to be true with a piece of open source software.

Evert Ford
Computer Guy
Westone Laboratories
http://www.westone.com


-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
Behalf Of Alan Fiebig
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 12:12 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Question for Clam users


I've been running ClamAV now for a couple of weeks. The autoupdate of new
signatures runs just fine. However, I'm seeing a pattern in Clam that I'm
not used to in my experiance with F-Prot, McAfee etc.

MS has an excellent auto-update routine to grab and install new signatures
for Clam as they become available. However, I'm seeing almost as many
updates to the actual Clam program as I'm seeing updates to the signature
files. With other anti-virus programs I use, I typically only see one or two
new releases for the engine a year, everything else is updated via the
periodic signature files.

With Clam, it seems the engine is updated almost as often as the signatures.
Obviously the auto-update routine in MS can't handle an update to the actual
program. How are the rest of you dealing with all these engine updates?
Right now I find myself either paying close attention to my email and/or the
Clam website, and manually installing the new software when I see it; this
all sort of defeats the purpose of the auto-update procedure.

I wouldn't mind doing this a few times a year, but just in the last month
there have been four updates (ignoring the development updates).

Thanks for any ideas,
-Alan
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