Generic virus scanner found

[Peter Bonivart]

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Steve Campbell wrote:
> Mr. Field's reply indicated "generic" was something I could write myself,
> but I haven't written anything. "generic" is also an option to Virus
> Scanners if I want to actually use it to scan with. I understand that it
> will update anything I have installed, whether I use it or not - but I don't
> have anything installed other than what I have specified.
>
> Help me understand, please. I'm sure it's just the frame of mind that I'm
> seeing this with.

Some time ago someone wanted to tackle some problem (I'm being very
vague since I don't remember it well but a search for generic scanner in
the archives should find it) by using their own perl scripts as a
scanner of sorts. They needed some way of plugging it into MailScanner
and Julian provided it with the generic scanner. If you check your lib
files you should find a wrapper and update script like the rest of the
scanners. Fill the wrapper script with your own code if you need to and
set Virus Scanners to include generic if you want to use it. As with all
scanners it will update regardless of whether it is used or not, if it's
installed it should be updated is Julians philosophy. That's why you see
two lines for it running the update script but that doesn't mean it's
actually updating something, if you look at your normal scanners they
add a third line with something like "Clam was updated/did not need
updating". There's nothing you need to do, everything is OK.

Read more about it in MailScanner.conf (Virus Scanners) and check the
generic-wrapper and generic-autoupdate scripts, they are also commented.

--
/Peter Bonivart

--Unix lovers do it in the Sun

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