Avast won't run

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by Judge Dee, Mar 29, 2010.

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  1. Judge Dee

    Judge Dee Guest

    I periodically scan Ubuntu Karmic with Avast for Linux.
    I just updated Avast. After the update, this appeared:
    "An error occurred in avast! engine: Invalid argument"
    I completely removed Avast, reinstalled it, and the same thing appeared. It just won't run.
    Any ideas? o_O
     
  2. Judge Dee

    Judge Dee Guest

    Well, I did a "locate avast", got rid of remnants and reinstalled. It ran, but after updating I got this message:
    "avast! engine failed to reinitialize after database upgrade.
    The application will terminate now"
    Obviously (I think) an update issue.

    edit: This issue is on their forums. No reply yet.
     
  3. linuxforall

    linuxforall Registered Member

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    Hi,

    Are you running Avast to scan for Windows Virus? In that case, there are other offerings from Avira, Bit Defender and others as well.
     
  4. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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  5. Judge Dee

    Judge Dee Guest

    Yes, I scan for Windows' virus. I download a ton of PDFs. I'm going to look at the other offerings.
    Thanks, Ocky. I'm going to test that solution now.

    Regards,
     
  6. linuxforall

    linuxforall Registered Member

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    You can try out clam which comes with a gui and is in the repos and can be set to do auto scans.
     
  7. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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  8. linuxforall

    linuxforall Registered Member

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  9. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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    Yes it's free - but you need a licence key o_O Don't know if it needs renewing after 1 year.

    http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Products/ScannerLicense/

    http://www.bitdefender.com/world/business/antivirus-for-unices.html

    OPTIMIZED TO SUPPORT ALL MAJOR UNIX-BASED PLATFORMS

    BitDefender optimizes their security solutions specific to each platform, ensuring minimal system degradation and maximum operational performance. To ensure compatibility with all major UNIX-based platforms the BitDefender’s UNIX-based solutions are delivered as rpm, deb and generic .tar.run packages.

    SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
    Operating System: Linux, FreeBSD
    Linux Kernel: 2.4.x or 2.6.x (recommended)
    FreeBSD: 5.4 (or newer with compat5x)
    glibc: version 2.3.1 or newer, and libstdc++5 from gcc 3.2.2 or newer
    Processor: x86 compatible 300 MHz; i686 500MHz; amd64(x86_64)
    Minimum Memory: 128 MB
    Minimum Free Disk Space: 100MB
    Supported Distributions:

    RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 or newer
    SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 or newer
    Fedora Core 1 or newer
    Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 or newer
    Slackware 9.x or newer
    Mandrake/Mandriva 9.1 or newer
    FreeBSD 5.4 or newer
     
  10. linuxforall

    linuxforall Registered Member

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    Thanks Ocky, according to the ubuntu site, you need to renew it every 30 days.
     
  11. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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    If you get the licence ...
    So it's 1 year.
     
  12. linuxforall

    linuxforall Registered Member

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    Thanks again for the clarification.
     
  13. mack_guy911

    mack_guy911 Registered Member

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    Last edited: Mar 30, 2010
  14. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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    Just installed BitDefender, updated virus defs. and ran scan of /home. it's very fast and has a great GUI. One thing I don't understand, after entering the licence key I received by email it says free but remaining 52 days instead of 365 days. Oh well I'll wait and see what gives after 52 days.

    BTW. To get r/click nautilus context menu :-
    http://unices.bitdefender.com/2009/06/01/let-there-be-nautilus-extension-packages/

    Edit:

    It's fast...
    Used command line:-
    bdscan /home/userx --log=/home/userx/bdscan.log --verbose --exclude-ext=rnd

    Results:
    Folders: 0
    Files: 86007
    Packed: 3542
    Archives: 1481
    Infected files: 0
    Suspect files: 0
    Warnings: 0
    I/O errors: 0
    Files/second: 754
    Scan time: 00:01:54
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2010
  15. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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    Now that clamav is flagged by Secunia https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1655438&postcount=1 all the more reason to replace it with the excellent BitDefender for those that want an AV. Updates are extremely fast and incremental.
    Note - there is not yet a deb package for the right click context menu entry if using (U)buntu 9.10.
     
  16. Comp01

    Comp01 Registered Member

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    What ocky suggested DOES make Avast work, just remove and reinstall after that (Remove COMPLETELY)
     
  17. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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    More human readable perhaps ? .. http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9087300&postcount=1

    Follow the instructions and then reboot should fix it.
    I must say BitDefender is way better. They have really given their linux versions some thought. :)
     
  18. Comp01

    Comp01 Registered Member

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    Yes, that forum post is more readable. lol But what you posted the first time was relatively easy to understand as well, I ran across that when I had the same problem and google'd it.
     
  19. Comp01

    Comp01 Registered Member

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    I think I might install bitdefender as well now that I just did a clean reinstall of Kubuntu.
     
  20. Ocky

    Ocky Registered Member

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