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Guides: OS X Tutorial: Scan for viruses with free open source ClamXav
Posted by: admin on Sunday, July 24, 2005 - 09:34 AM
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 One of the main reasons to become a Mac OS X users is the lack of viruses and trojan horse programs aimed at the Mac platform. Indeed, there has yet to be a single prominent example of a Mac OS X virus on the Internet. And yet, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to scan your Mac OS X computer for viruses that affect other systems such as Windows. If you work with Windows users or receive files from them, it is very helpful to be able to scan for viruses that may be coming from them, so you do not inadvertently pass them along to other Windows users. You yourself may even be a Windows user at work and want to send yourself items from your Mac OS X computer. Better safe than sorry.
ClamXav is an open source antivirus scanner for OS X. It is based on an anti-virus "engine" that itself is a free, open source program. The two combined present a powerful platform for scanning for viruses that is easy to keep up to date and very robust. While not packed with features like some commercial anti-virus utilities, it is free of cost and likely to do what most OS X users need to do with regard to virus scanning. Read on for a full guide to installing an using ClamXav to search and destroy viruses on your Mac.
ClamXav can be downloaded from the home page of the author, Mark Allan. Installation is a very simple procedure involving dragging the application to your preferred install location. Below is an image of what you get on the ClamXav install .dmg:
When you have copied the application to your hard drive and open it for the first time, you will see a notice about the requirement of installing the open source "ClamAV" open source anti-virus engine. Luckily, ClamXav automates this process and all you need to do is click "install" when prompted.
Once the ClamAV engine is installed, you can go ahead and begin to use ClamXav. Simply double click the application and you'll see the interface with its various options.
The interface is very simple. All that needs to be done is to click "Choose what to scan..." and select your desired folder for scanning. Once that's done, just hit "Start Scan" and you're off to the races. Thes scanning process can take a whilek, particularly for larger files. We scanned 92 Megabytes of documents in just under 90 seconds, so about a second per Megabytes is probably a good guess of the time required for scanning.
Once you've had ClamXav around for a while, you'll want to make sure you update your virus definitions file. This ensures that ClamXav is searching for all of the latest viruses on the Internet (many new ones appear each week).
Clicking on ClamXav's "preferences" button will get you a host of options for maximizing ClamXav's usefulness. ClamXav can be configured to run when you insert a removal disk, when you login to your computer, or it can be configured to watch a particular directory and scan it regularly for viruses. ClamXav can also scan for viruses on a schedule of your choosing, for example, every weekday at 1 in the morning (you set the exact schedule however you like). You can also have ClamXav automatically update its virus definitions file each time it is launched.
Happy virus scanning!
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