Sophos related questions...

[Spicer, Kevin]

> Two questions...
> 
> 1) Is there any way of identifying Sophos as being 'well out of date',
> and firing off a warning 'Your AV scanner is really old and 
> creaky' sort of message
> as part of MS?
> 
Normally you get mailed an error message (its not a very helpful message though) from the autoupdate script when Sophos stop supplying IDE's for your version at which point it needs updating urgently. 
 Given that Sophos updates their engine at the start of each month and supplies updates for three months your best bet is to set yourself a two monthly reminder to upgrade the engine.  I would suggest using the engine on the website not the one from the disc as the disc is always a month behind.

> 
> 3) /usr/local/Sophos has about 129 '363.200302181701'
> type directories... I'm presuming these are part of the 
> autoupdate process,

Yes, but they should be deleted (there should be only one of them present) - probably the autoupdate script is bombing before the point it deletes them [3.63 isn't supported by Sophos anymore so the script should be bombing!]

> but does their existence show it isn't updating correctly, 
> and when can I safely tidy them up
> and through them away? (from cron?)

Upgrade to 3.66 now and then get rid of all the 363 directories (I think you'll find they are all empty anyway - at least those beginning 363.200302).

You need to take a look at where mail sent to the mailscanner user (probably root if you use sendmail) is going to as you should be seeing mails for every failed upgrade attempt (unless you're just deleting them).




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