Sophos Updates

[Julian Field]

It is possible to completely automate it. But I agree with Jeff's comments.
With the current way it could be done, it would only take Sophos to
re-organise their web site and it would break. It would also end up relying
on a security slip-up made by Sophos, in order to be full automatic. The
process can break in so many ways that I wouldn't feel safe using an
automated script to do this. When you do a download and a "Sophos.install"
by hand you can easily see that they worked.

It only takes me 5 or 10 minutes every 3 months to update my 3 servers by
hand. I wouldn't feel safe leaving it to a cron job :-)

What you can easily do is add a monthly cron job which mails you the output of
         /usr/lib/MailScanner/sophos-wrapper -v | head -12
which will give you the release date of your current installation so you
know when it needs to be updated.

At 16:20 26/01/2003, you wrote:
>Good point.  Maybe what I'll do is just run my update script on all my
>boxes and download the update manually.  Worst case, the same version
>gets reinstalled :)
>
>Mike
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
>Behalf Of Jeff A. Earickson
>Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 10:16 AM
>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Sophos Updates
>
>
>Mike,
>    Ok, I understand...  I prefer to do this by hand (it only needs to be
>done every other month or two) because the risk of having an automated
>script screw up either your virus protection or MailScanner is too
>great.  I wonder what happens to MailScanner if it is doing virus
>protection, using Sophos, and the Sophos directory gets nuked. Big email
>train wreck?
>
>--- Jeff
>
>On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Mike Kercher wrote:
>
> > Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 10:10:05 -0600
> > From: Mike Kercher <mike at CAMAROSS.NET>
> > Reply-To: MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > Subject: Re: Sophos Updates
> >
> > I'm not talking about IDE updates...I'm talking about releases...3.65,
>
> > 3.66, etc.
> >
> > Mike
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
> > Behalf Of Jeff A. Earickson
> > Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 10:04 AM
> > To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > Subject: Re: Sophos Updates
> >
> >
> > That is what the sophos-autoupdate perl script in MailScanner's lib
> > directory is for.
> >
> > -----------------------------------
> > Jeff A. Earickson, Ph.D
> > Senior UNIX Sysadmin and Email Guru
> > Information Technology Services
> > Colby College, 4214 Mayflower Hill,
> > Waterville ME, 04901-8842
> > phone: 207-872-3659 (fax = 3076)
> > -----------------------------------
> >
> > On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Mike Kercher wrote:
> >
> > > Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 10:02:51 -0600
> > > From: Mike Kercher <mike at CAMAROSS.NET>
> > > Reply-To: MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > > To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > > Subject: Sophos Updates
> > >
> > > Has anyone automated the download of Sophos updates from their
> > > website? I wrote a little shell script to download from my local
> > > repository, extract and install them, but I still have to download
> > > the
> >
> > > .tar.Z manually by entering my username and password.
> > >
> > > Mike
> > >
> >

--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support