UnRaid Anti-Virus

[RussellinSacto]

Hello everyone,

 

I've been a loving unRaid user for about three years now - and with two hard drive failures to date, plus a few drive upgrades along the way - it has not failed me at all.  (A drive failure actually is a good thing for me, so far, as it gets me thinking about how to improve my setup.)

 

I simply am a raving fan!

 

There are two things that I'm looking to improve in my configuration:  AntiVirus and Offsite Backup

 

I have my UnRaid drives part of the scanning routine from one of my Windows boxes, but that very same machine (which also scans its own drives, of course) has had virus issues of its own.  Fortunately, the virus didn't connect to the mapped drives/shares on my unRaid (as far as I can tell).  Has anyone here had virus issues that affected the files on their unRaid box (most likely from a connected Windows box)?

 

These are the best ideas I have for anti-virus, please share your best ideas:

 

A.  Install an antivirus application on your primary computer and have it scan your UnRaid drives as part of its schedule.  I'm debating whether multiple computers with a variety of AntiVirus solutions each scanning the UnRaid at different times makes sense.

 

B.  Convert critical storage areas to READ ONLY, changing them to read/write or logging in with a read/write user when I need to store data there - but keeping the default read only.  Files like family photos/videos/etc could then be accessible, but hopefully viruses couldn't hit them?

 

To accomplish this, there seems to be two options:

 

1.  Turn off disk shares \\myraid\disk4, for example, and configure user shares.  (Turn off disk shares:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4874.0)

 

2.  Configure disk shares as read only, and then I think you can manually re-enable them as needed (rarely):  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=10634.msg101124;topicseen#msg101124

 

What are your suggestions to lockout viruses from your UnRaid box?  What's the best way to mitigate risk?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell Schutte

[Ford Prefect]

 

These are the best ideas I have for anti-virus, please share your best ideas:

 

A.  Install an antivirus application on your primary computer and have it scan your UnRaid drives as part of its schedule.  I'm debating whether multiple computers with a variety of AntiVirus solutions each scanning the UnRaid at different times makes sense.

 

 

I'd opt for a variant of type A:

- Use an AntiVir LiveCD to scan your online resources

- run it from inside a VM on virtualbox which in turn is installed on your unRAID box.

[RussellinSacto]

Hi Ford (Hitchhiker),

 

Help me to understand what you mean.  Isn't a LiveCD a bootable CD?  Are you making that into an image file that can then be booted within a VM VirtualBox on Unraid?

 

Man...  How about something for those of us who use Linux/Unraid as an appliance?  :-)

 

Thanks,

 

Russell

[Ford Prefect]

Help me to understand what you mean.  Isn't a LiveCD a bootable CD?

 

Yes, exactly.

Using a LiveCD you would circumvent the problem that the box that runs the Antivirus kit

is subject to infection itself.

 

Are you making that into an image file that can then be booted within a VM VirtualBox on Unraid?

 

...you can produce a  real CD from that ISO and use a standalone computer to

boot from it, connect to your net, download the latest antivir database, connect to your unraid

shares and finally perform a scan.

 

running the Antivir kit inside a VM comes as an extra when you have a Virtualization solution ready, like

having deployed Virtualbox as an application on bare-metal unRAID.

...you can boot a VM direct from that ISO...no need to convert it into an image file (virtual hard disk).

 

A list of LiveCDs can be found here

I have used the Kaspersky suite once in while..works quite well....used it to scan other VMs, mostly.

 

Man...  How about something for those of us who use Linux/Unraid as an appliance?  :-)

 

Yes, using the Antivir kit inside a VM is also possible for an architecture like this