I had read the book "Mac os X, Maximum Security". And it had a list of open source virus scanners. Clamav came highly recommended. So I headed over to the Clamav site and was pleasant surprised to find a mac client.

I had used Virex before through my .mac account. I dumped my .mac account because I needed more storage. But in so doing, I also gave up the virus scanner. But even then, Virex was horribly slow and painful to use.

I installed ClamXam and now have it scanning three times a week over night according to the cron tab.

This is the shell script I use:

#!/bin/bash

newtime=`date +%m-%d-%y_%I%M%p`

/usr/local/clamXav/bin/clamscan -v -r --mbox -i --log=/Users/stevebauer/Library/Logs/clamXav-scan.log /users/stevebauer/

groff -Thtml /Users/stevebauer/Library/Logs/clamXav-scan.log > ~/Desktop/ClamScan__$newtime.html

This script runs the scan, but also puts an html file on my desktop so that I am forced to look at it.

I don't know much about the commandline or coding at all. So, to me this is the best of what a mac has to offer: The power of a rubust unix virus scanner in an easy to use gui.

My thanks and appreciation to the clamav people and Mark Allan,

Rev. Steve Bauer

http://danbauer.org/~belisarivs/index.php