anti virus

[Oscar799]

Avira antivirus has found two viruses on my computer...? ... and it has put them on quarantine. Do I need to do something else? Is my computer safe? Why did avira put them on quarantine? Would it not be better/safer for avira to delete the files? Thanks!!!
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[GrayWizardLinux]

Hmmm strange. are you running windows too?

Meant to say welcome to Mint and their great forums.

[vrkalak]

Upon further investigation ... Avira is not made for Linux. It is a Windows program/software. http://www.free-av.de/en/support/index.html

You must be dual-booting with Windows, or have Avira installed in the Firefox Application. It has no effect on Linux.

There is already, a great and large Topic thread, in this Forum >> viewtopic.php?f=90&t=31723&p=256907&hilit=antivirus#p256907

It is always a great idea, to checkout the existing topics in any Forum, before asking questions. And searching through the FAQ of an application/program.

[GrayWizardLinux]

vrkalal - when I did quick scan this AM google:
Windows and Linux anti virus, firewall, anti spam, recovery solutions against malware infection - Avira AntiVir.

comes up under the google search definition/description of their website. interesting they have that there. I did not investigate the site very good sorry to say... weird that they would say linux. eh?

[linuxviolin]

Well, for instance about Avira AntiVir Personal - FREE Antivirus:

Available for Windows or UNIX.

(from the Avira web site)

And from http://www.free-av.de/en/documentation/index.html you can download Avira AntiVir Personal (UNIX) User Manual. From this PDF:

System Requirements

Avira AntiVir Personal asks for the following minimum system requirements on your
computer:
• i386 (Linux) or Sparc (SunOS) processor;
• 100 MB free hard disk space;
• 20 MB temporary disk space
• 192 MB (512 MB on SunOS) free memory space;
• Linux with glibc; SunOS.

You need sufficient disk space on your hard drive to save the
temporary guard files. We therefore recommend that there are at
least 4GB available for the temporary directory

Officially supported distributions for Avira AntiVir Personal:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Desktop
- Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 - 10.2
- Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 9
- Debian GNU/Linux 4 (stable)
- Ubuntu Desktop Edition 8
- Sun Solaris 9 (SPARC)
- Sun Solaris 10 (SPARC)

2.5 Technical Information

AntiVir Guard is based on DazukoFS (http://www.dazuko.org), an open source software
project. DazukoFS is a kernel module which allows the AntiVir Guard daemon to access
the files.

So yes, Avira is made also for Unix. Sorry vrkalak.

[vrkalak]

I stand corrected

[GrayWizardLinux]

Hey Man - we are all trailing to help!!!! I was trying to figure out what i missed in my old age... thank you linuxviolin....I am a percussionist/composer too any help is invaluable here.

[dawgdoc]

Avira antivirus has found two viruses on my computer...? ... and it has put them on quarantine. Do I need to do something else? Is my computer safe? Why did avira put them on quarantine? Would it not be better/safer for avira to delete the files? Thanks!!!

Check the Preferences/Options menu and you can probably choose to delete or quarantine the files. Some choose to quarantine in case they need to extract data from the infected files. Some AV companies will use the files to create new definitions when an unknown infected file is sent to them for investigation.

As far as doing something else: depends on what was found, where it was found, and if it is something you need.

[eric k]

I use Avast! on my Windows partition, and it does the same thing by default, quarantining the virus and then giving the user the choice of how to proceed from there. I imagine Avira is the same way. As suggested above, this should be easy to change under Preferences; in Avast! it's a one click change to have the viruses deleted automatically rather than held for later review.