How to setup / launch a cronjob antivirus scan

d00dness · 09-09-2008, 03:07 PM

Good day. Reciently I've installed the Symantec Scan Engine 5.1 software on one of my linux servers. The software comes with a command line scanner which you run from a terminal window. I've made a shell script which will do the scan but I can not figure out how to launch a terminal window first and then run the commands within the shell script. Lastly I'd like to include this shell script in a weekly cronjob. Below is the script I came up with. Thanks..

Code:

#!/bin/bash
#antivirus.sh
#20080909 - Scott
#-This script will run the command line antivirus scanner to the internal antivirus server
echo "Starting Scan"
cd /
./ssecls -server <ip> -verbose -mode scan -recurse /lib /home /bin
echo "Scan Complete"

arckane · 09-09-2008, 03:16 PM

Depending on your distro, but generally as sudo or root do:

crontab -e

Then put in what you want to run:

Code:

# m h  dom mon dow   command
00 02 * * * "apt-get update"

That runs at 2 mins past midnight (or 00:02), calls apt-get update to do it's thang. You would put in the full path to your script.

Why would you want to create a terminal session for a background job anyway? Regardless, if you have aterm installed you can do:

Code:

aterm -e /path/to/command

You might want to check the switch, but I think it's the -e to call an interactive terminal.

d00dness · 09-09-2008, 03:24 PM

Thanks for the reply..... The reason I want to see the results is because these are development machines and I need to be sure what the end results are displayed as. This way I can determine if the finding is a true virus finding or a false positive. Unfortunately I do not have aterm, just a your normal 'terminal' window which comes with Gnome. Also these are RedHat Linux Enterprise 5.1 machines.

chrism01 · 09-09-2008, 08:20 PM

If you want to see the results, either

1. manually open a xterm and run it
2. as above, but redirect stdout, stderr to a file eg

/path/prog >prog.log 2>&1

OR

nohup /path/prog >prog.log 2>&1 &

to run backgrounded and you can logout without breaking it.

Don't install prog in root dir.

d00dness · 09-10-2008, 08:07 AM

Thanks for everyones reply..... I found the answer from asking around... here's what the script looks like now...

Code:

#!/bin/bash
#antivirus.sh
#20080909 - Scott
#-This script will run the command line antivirus scanner to the internal antivirus server
exec 1>>scan.log 2>&1
echo "Starting Scan"
cd /
./ssecls -server <ip> -verbose -mode scan -recurse /lib /home /bin
echo "Scan Complete"

No terminal to open for the program to work, the results go to a log file which I can view daily. Thanks to everyone for thier inputs....I apprecaite the help...