I have successfully installed Fedora 5 on my rig. My next objective was to install a more recent video driver (nvidia), again successfully (w/out selinux on, the first attempt was a nightmare). Now I'm at the point of running a virus scan. I have installed Clam av, so far no install problems.

Now here is the dumb question, what is the command to run a full system scan in a terminal? I looked around but I never found it posted anywhere. I tried 'clamscan' but that took all of about .3 seconds to complete, I also cd'd to /, su'd in and typed clamscan and clamscan *.*, nothing but another .3 second scan.

Some help here would be great, thanks in advance!

the following command will scan you're full harddisk.

clamscan -r /

Clamscan -i -r from / does the job for me - just do clamscan --help for more options. The -i option indicates only show infected files and the -r scans subdirectories recursively.

Perfect, that worked like a charm! Thank you both!! I checked out the --help switch, but I didn't see a switch that will update the a/v database. Is there a specific switch for that, or is an automatic function (doubtful)? I looked around and I seen a command 'freshclam' but that seems to apply for removing and installing a fresh copy of clam av. Or am I wrong?

Freshclam updates database - its generally set up on installation either to run as daemon on system startup, when internet connection initiated or whenever. See here http://www.clamav.net/faq.html#pagestart

Ahh,I see. Very helpful instructions pages. It took me a second to figure out where the freshclam.conf was, because neither of the the 2 suggested directories contained it on my system. The 'whereis freshclam' command came in very handy! Thanks again for your help, 'specially for such a basic function question. (=

No problem

OK, I have another dumb question! How reliable is clam av, as far as not setting off 'false' alerts when it comes to viruses'? I'm curious because I've never used it, and people here have. On my old Windows system, I had used avast! which I found to be a very good a/v program, but occasionally triggered a false virus alert. (the last one found on 'The Ultimate Boot CD' .iso no less) Still better than mcafee or symantec's av's that don't find viruses until it's too late, or have been hand crafted by the corps. (That's another story)

The reason I even question it is because of this, the first system wide scan I had done actually picked up on a virus! Now were talking I have only had this o/s (FC5) on my rig for 1.5 days. I updated my video card drivers, set up the file sharing (samba), set up printer sharing, and installed clam. The system wide scan reported this message...

//usr/share/nexuiz/data/data20060208.pk3: Oversized.Zip FOUND

so I let clamav run its course and after its 72 minute scan I switched over to the directory and re-scanned the file and got this...

$ clamscan -r -i data20060208.pk3
data20060208.pk3: Oversized.Zip FOUND

----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 53081
Engine version: 0.88.1
Scanned directories: 0
Scanned files: 1
Infected files: 1
Data scanned: 48.75 MB
Time: 11.044 sec (0 m 11 s)

Has anyone seen this? Can there really be an oversized .zip file? Does that mean theres a virus in it, again I'm a bit sceptical because of the short life of this o/s. Does clamav automatically put files into a quarantine, or at least a quarantine state once it's found?

Thanks again for your help!

Item 36 in the faq deals with Oversized.Zip FOUND, item 38 deals with disinfecting and the clamscan --remove switch does what it says - use with care.