Can someone tell me what virus protection software is out there for linux? I use symantec corporate edition on alll of my windows server and workstations. I would mainly like to know whats the best purhcase solution and whats the best freeware soultion. Also can some one expalin to me the linux file system? It just seems foreign when compared to windows. For example I don't understand the directory structure.

first off, most "linux anti virus software" just really scans for windows one, there are really only a few linux viruses ever made, so when looking for a anti virus in linux remember to find out if it even scans for the handful of linux viruses

the linux file system is the vfs (virtual file system), it really isn't a file system at all, its job is to translate requests to access the file system, into requests the particular file system can understand, the main file systems for linux are

ext2/3 (most people like it, a lot of people say its crappy and out dated, ext3 is mainly just a quick hack to get ext2 up to speed with other file systems

reiserfs (i think they said this was the first journaled linux file system, version 3.6 and up is no longer developed, its only changed to fix bugs, version 4 is what they are trying to develop now, so v3.6 is mostly stable

jfs (IMB's jfs, i don't have any experience with this one, but it is journaled)

xfs (this is a port of the XFS from sgi's OS (i forget its name),supposedly faster then reiserfs, its also journaled, i never used this one because there web site has no info on what the limits, or benchmarks for this FS are, but people that use it i hear are usually pleased)

those are the main 4 file systems for linux, the original one is minix (i think thats its name), well something like that,.. its a little better then the FAT file system used in dos (or is it about the same as the fat32 file system?)

linux also has support for the ISO file system (used on CD's)

hfs (used in mac computers)
fat/fat32 used in windows
read support for ntfs used it window's

nfs support (a network file system, as well as a few other network file systems)

and there are at least 6 others I'm forgetting (almost every file system ever made )

Here is a good primer on the standard filesystem hierarchy in Linux. It may seem foreign to a new user, but the (lack of) thought behind the MS-DOS/Windows filesystem structure was criticized from the that very lack of structure. I think you will adopt to the "new" system quickly and become quite comfortable with it.

I use ClamAV for scanning mail for viruses and with excellent results. However, it does not provide a means to actually remove the viruses detected (with mails that is usually not too much of a problem). Several of the big names in the antivirus business provide Linux versions, and many of them for free (for home/personal use). F-Prot is one of those, and their Linux versions use the same engine as the Windows equivalents. Together with ClamAV it's a very good combination IMHO.


Håkan

Concerning the migration:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO.html

About antiviurs, this is one of the possible alternatives, but I dont know much about it.
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_avg_lmse.php

Thanks for the replys does anyone here know of some really good books for linux beginners? I'm very interested in samba thats why I asked about the antivirus software. I hope to be able to set samba up in a production environment soon serving windows clients. I don't want viruses on the server at all. I'm going to check and see if symantec or trend micro put out virus protection for linux.

Macafee has anti-virus for Linux. Recently symantec also released one if i'm not wront.