Sophos AntiVirus for Linux

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There are a lot of antivirus products for Linux servers, but not for Linux desktops. Sophos antivirus is one of the few. Not only that, but it is highly rated, and best of all, free. On the downside, you have to install and run it the old fashioned way, by the command line.

I believe it will work with most Linux distros, but I’m not sure. I have Linux Mint, and it installed successfully, so it should work with Ubuntu and other Debian variants as well.

Here’s how to install Sophos Antivirus for Linux.

Go here to get the program:

https://secure2.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-linux/download.aspx

Enter your name and email address, and you will then get a link for downloading the program.

Go to the link, and download the software to a temp folder, such as /Downloads/Sophos.
* I have found that it is better not to have any spaces in the path. (I don’t yet know how to deal with spaces in the path.)
* For purposes of this install, we will assume that the software is in /Downloads/Sophos.

Open a terminal session and type in the following commands:

Change to the folder where you downloaded Sophos:
cd /Downloads/Sophos

Unzip the Sophos file:
tar -xzvf sav-linux-free-9.tgz
(The downloaded file is known as a “tarball” — equivalent to a .ZIP file in Windows.)

Run the install as the superuser (put “sudo” in front of the command):
sudo ./sophos-av/install.sh

Make note of where it installs to, as well as the web address of the Sophos forums. An easy way to do that is to copy all of the text from the terminal window after the install has finished, and then save it as a text file.

Some useful Sophos commands:

How to run an on-demand scan of the computer:
sudo savscan /

How to manually update the antivirus definitions:
sudo /opt/sophos-av/bin/savupdate

How to uninstall the program:
sudo /opt/sophos-av/uninstall.sh

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Elly

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Update: If you have an old, slow computer with Linux Mint 18.2 xfce 32-bit and 2 GB of memory, Sophos A/V will slow things down to a crawl.

I installed Sophos A/V on my old lame computer. This computer has 2 GB of memory (that’s the max it will take). With Linux Mint 18.2 xfce 32-bit and the latest Firefox, it surfs pretty well. But when I installed Sophos A/V, it slowed to a crawl. I then uninstalled Sophos, and the computer sped up to its normal speed.

When Firefox 57 came out, I upgraded to it on my old computer, and finally that computer browses at an acceptable speed. But Sophos was the straw that broke the camel’s back. When I took the Sophos “straw” off of the camel’s back, things got back to normal.

On my new Dell computer with 4 GB of RAM and Linux Mint 18.2 xfce 64-bit, I installed Sophos A/V, and it hasn’t affected the performance of the computer in any noticeable way.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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