Anti-Viral Plugin (AVP) for SCSMFILTER PLUS

Virus filter for EMWAC IMS mail servers


Engine Argument Specifications for Interface with AVP


AVP comes preset with a list of virus scanners, command line arguments, and program exit codes to check for, that have been reported to work well by other AVP users.  If the list included in the AVP control panel doesn't include the virus scanning engine(s) that you use, you can consult your documentation for your scanner(s) and determine the appropriate arguments.  These arguments are input on the Engine Arguments section of the Scan Engine tab in the AVP control panel.  Scanning all messages with multiple scanning engines is now also supported by AVP.

For each scanning engine you add into AVP:

Engine Name is the path to and name of the scanning engine executable.
Engine Arguments are the command line parameters passed to the engine.   The command line parameters must act such that:

  1. The interface to the engine does not appear, if the scanner is a Windows application.

  2. The scanning program exits on completion, no matter what.

  3. No action is taken when a virus is found.

  4. The "Log file" (where the engine places descriptive information about the result of the scan) is directed to "$REPORTFILE" (quotes around the $REPORTFILE parameter are unnecessary, even when long filenames or paths with embedded spaces are used).  $REPORTFILE is actually replaced at run time (by AVP) by the full path to and name of a temporary file in in the <AVP installation>\TEMP  directory.  AVP MUST SUPPLY THE REPORT FILE NAME AT RUN TIME.  If your virus scanner does not support a "report file" analysis output parameter, or you prefer the DOS console output of the scanner to the analysis your scanner generates when told to log its analysis to a file via a command line parameter, you can alternatively end your engine arguments with ">$REPORTFILE".

  5. No boot sector, or memory scan is to take place.

  6. Don't scan subdirectories (this is usually the default setting).

  7. All files are scanned, regardless of program extension (i.e. ".TMP" files are to be scanned).  While the files AVP  decompresses for scanning  will always have a ".TMP" extension, appending *.TMP to the engine arguments alone may not be fully sufficient for proper scanning   The scanner might disregard the *.TMP file directive if ".TMP" is not an "included" scan file type via other arguments.

  8. When invoking the scanner, AVP sets the "Current directory" to a (message specific) temporary directory to be scanned.  Thus, in most cases adding *.TMP as the final command line parameter is sufficient to specify all temp files in the appropriate directory (as set by AVP) are to be scanned.  A  few Windows virus scanners disregard the "current directory" environmental setting, however.  If you need the directory to scan explicitly included in your scanner invocation command line, you may use the $MSGTEMP variable, which is replaced at run time by the message specific temporary directory to be scanned.  For example, adding $MSGTEMP\*.tmp to the Engine Arguments (usually at the end), will explicitly invoke the engine with the full scan path, i.e. c:\install\mfilter\avp\temp\AVP16E.TMP\*.tmp..

Found Virus Error Level(s) is the  Exit Code(s) or ErrorLevel(s) the scanner returns upon completion of scan, when a virus is found.  If you are not sure, >0 might work, but you should probably determine the explicit code or codes that should be used from the documentation for your scanner. AVP will accept a number, or ">" followed by a number.  AVP supports multiple Exit Codes for each scanning engine, although in most cases only a single exit code need be set.

No Infection Exit Codes is the  Exit Code or ErrorLevel the scanner returns upon completion of scan, when a NO virus is found.  Typically, this only needs to be zero ("0").  If your scanner returns one or more different exit codes for certain conditions, (i.e. a password protected Excel spread sheet has been encountered which cannot be properly scanned), for which you do not wish AVP to exhibit its "Crash" behavior (resulting in the message being  trashed, or AVP being de-activated, depending on your selection for Crash Behavior on the Configuration tab in the AVP control panel), you may set these additional exit codes here.

 

If you have found settings that work for an un-listed engine, or superior settings to those provided in AVP's suggested settings list, please e-mail us (via ) what settings were needed to make AVP work with your scanning engine, so these settings might be added to the pre-configured listings in future releases of AVP, assisting others.

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