sophos-ide-update

sophos-ide-update.pl is a Perl program to update virus signature .ide files from the Sophos web server.

Author

Mark Martinec <mark.martinec@ijs.si>, December 2001
Copyright © 2001, Mark Martinec

Patches and problem reports are welcome.

Download

The latest version of this program is available at: http://www.ijs.si/software/, in particular:

• sophos-ide-update_1.0.tar.gz (2001-12-04 distribution)
• sophos-ide-update_1.0.tar.gz.md5 (md5 crypto checksum)

Terms and conditions

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Other licensing terms are possible, please contact the author.

Description

• creates a temporary directory as a working area and as a locking mechanism;
• sends a conditional HTTP GET request to a Sophos' web server requesting <x>_ides.zip file if and only if it is younger than the local copy;
• downloads the new <x>_ides.zip file (if younger) into a temporary directory and unpacks it flatly, ignoring paths and members with weird names;
• compares the current and new .ide files, decides what changes need to be made, carefully updates the sav directory and produces a report;
• if Sophie daemon is detected and any changes were made, send it a SIGHUP;
• writes a terse report to a log file (if defined) and mails it (or a possible problem report) to an administrator (if specified);
• removes the temporary directory;
• exits with code 0 (success) if:
  • everything went smoothly,
  • or, there was a problem, but a problem report was successfully mailed;
  • or, regardless of any problems, a '-s' command line option was set (useful to prevent mail bounces if the program is run from a MTA pipe);
  otherwise exit code is nonzero;

This program can be run periodically (e.g. from cron), or/and triggered on-demand by some other means, e.g. manually or run by MTA using an alias that pipes Sophos IDE update announcements to it (actual message on stdin is ignored, MTA pipe delivery is used only as a trigger).

For more detailed instructions see the beginning of the program.

Mailing list

There is a very low-traffic mailing list sophos-ide-update-announce@ijs.si where announcements about new versions will be posted as well as warnings about threatening bugs if discovered. The posting is restricted to sophos-ide-update developer(s).

To subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) the mailing list please visit the list server's web page http://mailman.ijs.si/listinfo/sophos-ide-update-announce

You can also subscribe to the list by mailing the command SUBSCRIBE either in the subject or in the message body to the address sophos-ide-update-announce-request@ijs.si . You will be asked for confirmation before subscription will be effective.

The list of members is only accessible to the list administrator, so there is no need for concern about automatic e-mail address gatherers.

Questions about the mailing list and concerns for the attention of a person should be sent to sophos-ide-update-announce-admin@ijs.si

There is no general discussion list about sophos-ide-update at the moment. Please send comments and suggestion to the author.