F-PROT AntiVirus Frequently Asked Questions

Purchasing and General Questions

F-PROT for MailServers

F-PROT for Sendmail Milter

AVES

F-PROT for Unix

F-PROT for Windows Desktop

F-PROT for MS Exchange

F-PROT for Linux Desktop

F-PROT Daemon Scanner

General

F-PROT, sounds familiar, what is their background?
F-PROT has been a leader in the AV industry since 1989. Their DOS scanner took the PC World by storm in the early 90's and they have grown ever since. They have focused on providing technology to OEM partners for the past few years and are now re-focusing on producing their own products.

Why trust F-PROT for AV Signatures?
F-PROT was founded by a Fridrick Skulason, one of the top computer virus researchers in the world in response to the fast proliferation of early virus outbreaks in the late 80's and early 90's. F-PROT employs 2 world class virus researchers, more than many much larger companies, in addition to many other application and av developers. When you purchase F-PROT you are purchasing the highest level of AV protection.

What is the relationship between F-PROT and RAE Internet?
RAE Internet is the US Distributor for F-Prot. We provide sales, marketing, support and channel management for F-PROT US customers and Resellers.

I am a reseller, Can I offer F-PROT to my customers?
Absolutely, check out our reseller pages for details.

Where is F-PROT produced?
F-Prot is produced in the beautiful city of Rejkyavik, Iceland.

What is relationsip between F-PROT and F-Secure?
F-PROT is one of the providers of AV technology to F-Secure. They are entirely seperate products and companies.

What's an F-Prot?
It stands for "Fridrik-Protect" as in Fridrik Skulason, who is F-Prot's founder. FRISK is also a combination of his name.

How can I implement F-PROT with my mailserver?
F-PROT can be implemented via native LibMilter, QMail or Postfix interfaces. F-PROT can also be invoked by applications such as Amavis, MIMEDefang, CanIT, Anomy, and others.

Does F-PROT support spam filtering as well as mailserver antivirus?
The F-PROT AVES system supports spam filtering in addition to virus. AVES is an advanced filtering service created by F-Prot that features multilevel spam protection and F-Prot virus filtering. Check out AVES today.

Which mailservers does F-PROT support?
F-PROT currently supports Sendmail via a Milter Interface, a new native QMail inteface (interfacs the same as RAV), a new Postfix content filter or procmail scripts.

Which operating systems are supported?
Linux (all distributions), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris.

What are the primary components of F-PROT?
The PLCW (Pre Loadable Call Wrapper) is used by applications such as NFS or Samba or by the file system for on access scanning. The fprot binary is a command line scanner. There are a number of mailserver interfaces including the bundled mailscan perl scripts, anomy, and F-PROT will have native mailserver support very soon. F-PROT includes a daemon scanner which can be accessed via http requests from your application. A number of third party apps have written interfaces to F-PROT based on their daemon scanner basic API.

How do I keep F-Prot up to date?
F-PROT for Linux ships with an update script, /usr/local/f-prot/tools/check-updates.pl . Schedule this via crontab, checking 2x a day is a good idea, though you may check more if you like. Back to Top

Are F-Prot updates fast?
When you purchase F-Prot you benefit from a team of world class computer virus researchers. Bear in mind that many AV companies do not have any researchers on caliber with Frisk, and still more do not produce their own updates.

Is there a configuration file for F-Prot for MailServers?
F-PROT for MailServers can be configured via Anomy or by in the scan-mail script.

Can I use F-Prot in scripts?
Yes. The F-Prot daemon scanner will scan via http requests to the internal ports. The daemon scanner is a resource efficient, real time scanner. The on demand scanner may also be used in scripts.

What is AVES?
AVES is an email filtering service provided by F-PROT. AVES provides Spam and Virus filtering with end user or admin managed quarantine, pre-defined policy levels for virus and spam, and end-user maintained white and black lists. AVES uses multiple spam checks and F-PROT AntiVirus.

Can I try AVES for free?

Why use an email filtering service instead of bringing products in house?
Stop virus and spam before they enter your mailserver, reduce administrative costs, multiple spam checks.

I like AVES, but I don't want a filtering service, can I bring it in house?
It is possible to bring the AVES components in-house in certain situations. Please for details.

Can users self administer quarantined virus and spam with AVES?
Yes. An end user or administrator may monitor virus and spam tools.

What is the pricing for F-PROT for Desktop?
F-PROT is priced very low for desktop.
Home Users - 1 License $29.00USD
Commercial License

Number of Workstations	Price
10	$50.00
11-50	$4.00/Seat plus $50
51-100	$246 for 50 Seats + $3/Seat above 50

Please call for more than 100 workstations.

Pricing is cumulative so 100 seats is $50 for first 10 + ($4 * 40) + ($3 * 50) = $360. F-PROT is the most affordable, credible AV solution. Pricing will be revised with future versions.

What is the pricing for F-PROT for MailServers?
F-PROT for MailServers is priced per user. There are significant price breaks for ISP's so please don't base pricing views on this table for larger installations.

Number of Accounts	Price
1-24	$299.00
25-49	$399.00
50-99	$499
100-199	$799.00
200-299	$1099

How Do I get F-PROT for Sendmail w/ LibMilter to work?
F-PROT for Sendmail LibMilter was released with version 4.2. In order to get it to work you must have LibMilter compiled into Sendmail. This is standard in all recent versions of Unix and requires Sendmail 8.11 or greater. Assuming this is taken care of follow these steps:

Backup your sendmail.cf file!

Read the install guide in /usr/local/f-prot - summarized below

Add the following line to /usr/local/mail/sendmail.mc
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER(`f-prot-milter', `S=/var/run/f-prot.sock, F=T, T=E:5m')

Create a new sendmail.cf file, for instance:
m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
see your Linux distribution documentation for details.

Start F-PROT daemon scanner using the rc script that is suitable to your system.  
These are supplied in /usr/local/f-prot/tools/rc_scripts

Start scan-mail plugin with this command: 

/usr/local/f-prot/tools/scan-mail.pl -d -milter /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

Then restart sendmail (killall -HUP sendmail).

Which MailServers are supported by F-PROT?
Sendmail (LibMilter or Procmail) on Linux, Qmail and Postfix on Linux and FreeBSD.

Is F-PROT for Sendmail for LibMilter available?
Yes For Linux only. xBSD is on the way.

How does F-PROT for PostFix function?
As a content filter.

How does F-PROT for QMail function?
By creating a symbolic link for qmail-queue -> f-prot-qmail -> qmail-queue.orig

Does F-PROT work with procmail?
Absolutely.

Can I offer F-PROT to my customers?
Yes. We are working on retail packaged versions, for now only download versions are available in the US.

Is F-PROT centrally managed?
Not at this time.

Will F-PROT break lots of applications and use lots of memory?
No. F-PROT is a low resource, bare bones, secure product. F-PROT is priced very reasonably for large installations. F-PROT is solid virus protection for tight budgets w/o the bells and whistles.

Can I use the F-PROT DOS scanner to fix virus headaches?
Please do. The F-PROT DOS Scanner evokes memories of college computer labs. The F-PROT DOS scanner is one of the most widely deployed DOS scanners in the world.

What is the F-PROT Daemon Scanner?
The F-PROT Daemon scanner is a general purpose virus scanning daemon that runs on an internal port on your Unix system. It is required for many F-PROT scanning applications.

Can I integrate the f-prot daemon scanner into my applications?
Yes. The F-PROT daemon scanner is accessed by issuing http formatted request to an internal address.

Is there an API for the F-PROT Daemon Scanner?
All calls to the F-PROT Daemon scanner are made via http requests. There is no API beyond the HTTP requests.

What is scan-mail.pl?
Scan-mail.pl provides the interface between the mailserver specific components of F-PROT and the F-PROT daemon scanner. Scan-mail.pl can be called via procmail or may be launched as a daemon to provide scanning services to real time email traffic. When scan-mail is integrated with a mail server, email travels in the following path: mailserver -> F-PROT server specific component -> scan-mail.pl -> anome -> daemon scanner

What is Anome?
Anome is an open source MIME parser essentially. F-PROT for MailServers uses Anome as it's MIME parser.

How can I trial F-PROT for Linux/xBSD/Solaris?
If you download F-PROT for mailservers you will have all of the components of F-PROT for MailServers, FileServers and Desktop. So you only need a single download to trial all applications of F-PROT.

What is the F-PROT Linux Desktop Product?
This includes the f-prot binary.

What versions of MS Exchange does F-PROT support?
F-PROT for Microsoft Exchange supports Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 virus protection.

What operating systems does F-PROT for Windows support?
Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, and Windows XP

How does F-PROT for Windows licensing work?
F-PROT has a single user product and a multi-user product. Each requires a customer id that is verified when you perform an update. Without a valid customer number you will not be able to perform an update.

Do I need to reinstall F-PROT for Unix after I purchase my evaluation copy?
Yes. However, you do not need to reconfigure your mailserver, which is the difficult part. F-PROT has a differerent binary for licensed and unlicensed versions.

What is the correct order to start/stop the F-PROT for Sendamil Mi lter Sources?
The correct sequence is:
start f-protd
start scan-mail.pl
start sendmail.


do the shutdown in the same order, i.e:
stop f-protd
stop scan-mail.pl
stop sendmail

How can I silently update my F-PROT for Windows clients?
You must utilize the F-PROT Updater command line tool for this task, Update.exe. Updater.exe also allows you to distribute F-PROT virus defs to your workstations. However, the deployment command is not necessarily scalable. If you schedule Update.exe to run as Windows task you can achieve silent updates w/ F-PROT.

Updater can be run with the following options:

RUN   : Start a update with given arguments
/QUIT : Quit after update
/LAN : Use local area network
/INTERNET : Use the internet
/HIDDEN : Hide the user interface!!!
/ADMIN_DISTRIBUTE          : 
Admin distribute used only with command line :
  Downloads defs from net and copy's them to
  a directory stated in the LAN settings.
Command line behavior
            /RUN  [Starts update with given settings.]
            /QUIT [/RUN + /QUIT]
            [Starts update with given settings and quit after the update is done.]
            /LAN  [Set update path to use Local Area Network or a path]
            /INTERNET [Set update path to use the Internet]
            /ADMIN_DISTRIBUTE [/RUN + /INTERNET + /ADMIN_DISTRIBUTE]
                [Start update with given settings and copy the defs to the path given in LAN]

How can I create a boot disc on a floppy?
You will need three floppies:
Copy on diskette 1) f-prot.exe, english.tx0, macro.def
Copy on diskette 2) sign.def
Copy on diskette 3) sign2.def

To run insert the first diskette and type: "f-prot /loaddef " at the command prompt.

The sign2.def file became too big to fit on one diskette, thus we recommend that people create a CD with all the files mentioned above, if it is possible to boot from the CD drive.

Keep in mind that another way to run F-Prot is to try to boot a computer in Safe Mode and run F-Prot from there.

You can also have a look at this page for another way to create a floppy with F-Prot on it.

How can I create a boot disc on a CD?

Try using Ultimate Boot CD or see the instructions at RescueME for Dos or HardwareSecrets.com.

How can I change the F-PROT Milter Timeouts? We are seeing lots of timeouts after installing F-PROT for Sendmail w/ LibMilter.
In order to change the timeout values of the F-PROT Milter use the following configuration options in the sendmail.mc definition of F-PROT:

INPUT_MAIL_FILTER(`f-prot-milter',`S=local:/var/run/f-prot.sock,F=T,T=S:300s;R:300s;E:5m')

Do you have an init script for the F-PROT milter interface?
Absolutely, get it right here.

Be aware that you use this init script in addition to the f-protd script that came with your f-prot distribution. Once you have the two scripts in place (/etc/rc.d/init.d) run this to make sure they start at boot:

/sbin/chkconfig --add f-protd
/sbin/chkconfig --add f-prot-milter

I like F-PROT research but I need more features, is there an option?
Yes. You can use F-PROT with the RAE Internet MPP. The MPP provides extensive management, logging and configuration options with a simple Webmin interface and/or configuration file management. MPP offers a discard option, ability to selectively scan users and/or domains, and the ability to add more scanners such as SpamAssassin.

Scan-mail.pl is consuming all available memory and causing my server to drop processes, what should I do?
This seems to happen when very large attachments are sent via scan-mail.pl. You can try to use a program such as MimeDefang as the F-PROT interface or you can try the MPP as your interface to f-protd.