[AMaViS-user] RE: Best AV package (not Kaspersky) to run with amavis?

[lisa c. <li...@ka...>]

Dear Bruno,
I am sorry that you have had problems and feel this way, according to our
records we supplied you with a CD version as you were having problems with
your download, for which the balance is still outstanding, I appreciate you
may want to hold off payment until any problems are sorted out.

With regards to support for Linux, we never suggested that you could only
get support in the UK if you purchased from us, we currently support this
product indirectly, anything we cannot handle we pass to our main support in
Russia. Products purchased from the Russian site are supported by them, the
reason for this is that they have a much larger staff than we have,
otherwise we would be inundated with International support. 

I see the message from Friedrich Lobenstock and thank him for his input, I
have escalated all technical queries to our Technical Support Coordinator in
Russian office for further comment.


Regards
Lisa Clancy
Kaspersky Lab UK Ltd.
Orwell House, Cowley Road
Cambridge
CB4 0PP
Tel:-
General: +44 (0) 870 0113461
Sales: +44 (0) 870 0113462
Support: +44 (0) 870 0113463 or 0870 0113464
Fax: +44 (0) 870 0113465
http://www.kasperskylab.co.uk 
Due to the large amount of email handled, please include all previous
correspondence.
Thank you.


-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Prior [mailto:br...@su...]
Sent: 27 September 2001 20:14
To: ama...@li...
Cc: su...@ka...; Kaspersky Lab Support
Subject: Best AV package (not Kaspersky) to run with amavis?


I thought I had read recommendations in this or the postfix mailing list
that Kaspersky was a good AV package to combine with amavis and postfix. So
I went ahead and bought a copy (linux for workstation version). But I am
having such trouble getting it working with amavis (and getting such
ineffective support from Kaspersky) that I am starting to think that I might
have wasted the money, and ought to try an alternative package. Is there any
sort of consensus on the best AV programs to use with amavis? I don't mind
paying, but my budget doesn't stretch to hundreds of pounds.

I am running Mandrake 8.0 with kernel 2.4.6-ac2 on a Duron 800 with 128Mb of
RAM and 20Gb storage in a 2-disk software RAID-1 mirror. Mandrake comes with
postfix-20010228-6mdk (I guess this is a Mandrake patched version, but I
have no idea what patches they have applied). I have tried both
amavis-perl-11 and amavisd-smtp-20010108. amavis-perl fails make check (see
earlier posts). I believe amavisd is expected to fail make check anyway - is
this right? If so, how do you know whether it has been successfully
compiled, and will work when running?

Anyway, I am guessing that the problem is with Kaspersky partly because make
check fails the virus-msg test on amavis-perl, and partly because of
problems I seem to have with the Kaspersky daemon and client. kavscanner
works fine, so it is not an intrinsic problem with Kaspersky's virus
checking. kavdaemon starts without complaint if called directly, but claims
to have failed if started from Kaspersky's own init-script, although "ps ax"
reports the kav processes as running. Having obtained the latest version on
CD, the DaemonClient now compiles and does not segfault when run, but it
does not detect EICAR.COM, which kavscanner detects fine. AvpDaemonClient
simply reports:

Test result: 0
No viruses were found
Found viruses:

for each file in the directory that it is pointed at and "Return Code: 0" at
the end. I don't know whether this is an indication that I can't run
AvpDaemonClient this way, whether there is a fault with AvpDaemonClient, or
whether there is a problem with kavdaemon. As there is no documentation, I
don't know how to find out. Whichever, I am assuming that problems like this
with kavdaemon and/or AvpDaemonClient are the most likely explanation of why
amavis-perl fails make check. Is this fair?

I know this may appear to relate more to Kaspersky support than amavis, but
I was hoping that there was a greater repository of expertise within this
mailing list than appears to reside within Kaspersky's support offices.

I first bought KAV on 17 August. Unfortunately, I bought it from their
web-site, so had to download it. But the download arrived corrupted every
time. Eventually, I gave up trying to download it, and decided to see
whether I could use the keyfile (which I could recover from the uncorrupted
part of the downloaded tarball) against the version of KAV that came with
Mandrake Powerpack. Superficially, this seemed to work, but I had a number
of small problems which I wrote to Kaspersky support about on 22 August, and
asked at the same time if what I had done was legitimate. I pointed out in
my email that I was trying to run KAV with amavis. On 24 August, I received
the following reply:

Dear Sir,

What do you use kavkeeper or Amavis?

Sincerely yours,
Saphia Rahimova
____________________________________________
Technical support /Kaspersky Lab Ltd
10, Geroyev Panfilovtsev Str., 123363, Moscow, Russia
Tel.: +7 095 797 87 07; Fax: +7 095 797 87 00;

I put this down to language problems, so I replied politely pointing out
that I had already explained in my previous email that I was using amavis. I
received no further reply.

After a fortnight, I got frustrated waiting for a reply, and decided to
phone Kaspersky Labs UK. I asked for their help, but was told that, as I had
bought the downloadable version from the web, I was not entitled to support
from their UK office. As I suspected that language may have been the
problem, I decided to get a refund on the web purchase (which DigitalRiver
were very good about), and buy another copy of KAV from Kaspersky Labs UK,
so that I could at least get English language support.

I went away on holiday in early September, but emailed Kaspersky Labs UK
support when I returned, to ask for their help with some of the problems
mentioned. Four days later, I received the following reply:

 Dear Breno,

unfortunately we have a little error in our program which will be fixed
soon. The problem is in checksum calculation...

Please rename the script kavdaemon.rh in such a way that you have not the
full word "kavdaemon" in the name. For example, kavd.rh or something else.

We are very sorry for this inconvenience.

 Sincerely yours,
Elena Kabirova
___________________
Technical Support Coordinator/Kaspersky Lab Ltd
10, Geroyev Panfilovtsev Str., 123363, Moscow, Russia
Tel.: +7 095 797 87 07; Fax: +7 095 797 87 00;

This solved the cosmetic problem that I could not run the init script from
/etc/rc.d/init.d, but:

1. It did not begin to address the more serious point that I had asked about
that the daemon appeared to fail when called from the script

2. How thick is it to release a script which will fail unless you rename it?

3. Why did Kaspersky Labs UK tell me I had to buy from them to get support
from the UK if support was going to be palmed straight back off to Russia
anyway?

That is why I am now looking for an alternative. Sorry to lay on the detail,
but I thought it might be (a) useful background, and (b) a salutary tail for
anyone considering buying from Kaspersky.

I wonder why the Russian economy is going from bad to worse?

Yours sincerely,

Bruno Prior
br...@su...