Virus Scanner recommendation!

[Oliver Kilian]

Dear Pandoras Box Users!

Recently the news about virus infected Pandoras Box Servers and Players is increasing. As the usage of live monitoring antivirus software corrupts Pandoras Box functionality we have a different approach for you. If your Pandoras Box shows a strange behaviour we recommend running ClamWin Portable antivirus to go. It is a standalone Virus Scanner that works off a USB stick and is not installed on the local machine.

Please make sure that the ClamWin software is the only content on the USB stick and that the USB stick is virus free!

Please note that ClamWin Free Antivirus does not include an on-access real-time scanner, that is, you need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware. Please scan external drives before attaching them to your system!

The ClamWin Free Antivirus can be found here: http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/clamwin_portable

Best regards
The coolux team!

[djrappa]

I have a machine that I use just for scanning purposes. Before any external storage is plugged into our servers I connect it to this machine first which scans the drives as soon as you connect them.
That way we ensure nothing infected is connected to our servers ever.

I suggest this as a good practice for users, especially given you will ususally have a laptop or something kicking around anyway that can be used for this purpose.

[Oliver Kilian]

Hi Clint!

This is a great working habit, we do it the same way here in the office. Every external drive is scanned at a separate station prior hooking it up to the network.

Thanks for sharing
Oliver

[dogandpony]

Hey Cooluxe,

I have a additional question:
Would u say that it possible to run a virustool on a manager pc with installed PB MediaManager Software (no preview feature)?
Did u made any tests in the past?

greetings

derMakko

[Patrick Verhey]

Hi,

the AntiVirGuard will do a good job as you can set this one up to ignore Pandoras Box. So it will make you system safe, but will not affect Pandoras Box at all.

regards

Patrick

[Dave Thompson]

Hi Patrick!

Does one install the AntiVir Guard on the manager machine?
How would one scan the servers?
I'm pretty sure my manager has become infected, as I'm unfortunately not the only one to use it.

Kind regards,

[Markus Zeppenfeld]

Hi!

It makes definitely sense to scan the servers from time to time or before using them on a show.
There are as well some nice tools to download, e.g. from Avira to get a bootable CD to scan the servers without installing anything.

http://www.avira.com/en/download?produc ... cue-system

Markus

[mr_gosh]

Hey Guys,

because its not really a solution to run to "the scanning machine" every time the video artist renders a new version of a file and there are many virus out there, that can hide themself on windows... we created for a customer completely different solution:

We built a Storage Server that nearly can't be infected (BSD Unix) with several network cards. An external network card and an internal network card.
Than the artist can copy his stuff at any time to the Machine. The storageserver (wich is really fast (~145 MB/s on GigaBit - much more fun than on usb sticks )) than scans the files for infections, deletes unwanted files and moves the files to the internal network. From here the Pandoras Box can import these files.

A nice and clean solution - if somebody is interested in such a solution, I can give hints.

BUT! - why do you insist to a 255.0.0.0 Networkmask - this is so slow! If I use that Network Mask - the network traffic looses nearly a quarter of its speed - which is logic from a network point of view. So what problems can we await if we just use 255.255.255.0 for better performance?

Thanks and regards.
Mr.Gosh

[mr_gosh]

Ahh, yes - and the best Live - Antivrus CD is Desinfect from the german magazine ct'.
There you have a clean Live Linux with three Anti Virus Programs on board

[drewread]

AntiVirus really is an issue, and as I am looking into purchasing my first Media Server, I am interested to know what is causing the issue running full time AV on a well specified workstation with Pandora's Box? I understand that there is overhead, but with most of the graphical processing being off loaded to various GPUs (it is right?) and a minimum of i7 quad core with HT enabled and let's say 16+GB of ram, would the system not be able to hold it's own?

Is simply turning off real-time scanning of the folders that PB uses for content and the program going to be good enough, this would still allow any plugged in drives for new content to be scanned automatically before the content is copied to the appropriate folder.

I am sorry to ask so many questions, but in this day and age it is not appropriate to have a workstation that is not protected that will continuously see data from other sources... which a PB Media Server obviously will.

[Markus Zeppenfeld]

Hi drewread,

we are using and running F-Secure on our machines in the office which are as well used as a Manager PC. This has so far not been an issue while having the scanner turned on all the time.
It is less the performance and possible delay a scanner adds to a file action than blocking and delaying commands. I had AntiVir running on a client PC which was perfectly communication from Widget to Pandoras Box using Faders and various commands, but was blocking button clicks. As this is completely random, unpredictable and does not make any sense, we recommend to not use any virus protection.

From my personal experiences over the last years, i can recommend F-Sercure software as on access scanner.

Cheers
Markus