Hello all, I've seen allot of threads on antivirus protection for the virtual computer but none that address my specific question. From what I figure if you have more than 1 operating systems running do you need more than one antivirus programs running too? I know there are anti-virus programs out there for OSX that will also scan Windows and Linux too. I was wondering if I have an antivirus application in OSX can i get it to scan the virtual disk volume? Does anyone know of an antivirus application that does this? Thanks for your help
You need an anti-virus for each system you want protected. The thing is, OS X viruses (the few of them out there) have zero effect on Windows, and Windows viruses (the 20 million of them out there) have no effect on Mac OS X. Mac can't be harmed by Windows viruses, so it can't really protect against them either, and vice versa. Technically speaking, if you want each system virus protected, you need to install a virus protection on each system... The best I can recomend for the Windows (XP) side was one I saw posted here the other day. It's free: http://free.grisoft.com For Windows XP, I would also recomend installing both Windows Defender & SpyBot S&D... I had to start a new image the other day because I ran one thing that installed 1000 piecies of spyware... For the linux side I can't be of much help, as I've never really used it. And for the Mac side I currently don't use anything either, as there has been little need worth justifying the price of one (not to mention differences in the intel mac that may very well change things)... But that's my case. In any event if you do want to protect each system, you will have to do them one by one. Currently there is no alternative, and I would venture to guess there probably won't ever be one...
. Now that Apple have OSX (free BSD) the virus issue is much the same as that for Linux. The kernel allocates an "access code" to programs at time of installation. Cracking this is the same as cracking a password, and hence the extraordinarily tedeous propogation process(it takes a long time to infect new machines). Antivirus programs for Linux protect against Linux viruses (the handful of them), but mostly they are for protecting windows clients against windows viruses (the twenty million of them) when Linux is providing a mail server to them. Because the VM is not actually known to Linux as it is tucked away in a secret little hidey hole and accessed via some Parallels hidey hole access magic, you need to do individual protection for each VM. Grisoft provide excelent protection with AVG antivirus and Ewido antispy. Protection is required on two fronts nowadays. .
What about file sharing? I understand about the protections needed for windoes and mac are different but I think it would be preferable to have the windows anti virus in the domain of OSX, I have setup my installation of XP to read and write files in my OSX installation it seems you could set it up the other way around. This would allow osx to see your entire Parallels drive. Then your antivirus application in OSX could scan your entire Parallels drive. Is this possible or am I thinking of it in the wrong way?
. I think your right. You can certainly mount the XP share with Samba. From there it should be just a matter of having the antivirus scan those files as well. .
