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Sophos Bootable Anti-Virus / sbvac.exe ISO-creator feature suggestion

 Good day everyone,

and especially to the Product Manager for the sbvac tool. I have been advised by technical support Germany to post my request/suggestion here for you to find.

Our suggestion/request is a modification to the sbvac.exe tool which we think should be rather easy to do: allow the user to specify a folder on the command line that is then included into the ISO image. F.i.:

c:\temp\sophosCD\> sbavc.exe sophos.iso -include="c:\temp\sophosCD\CurrentUpdates"

Why would we need this? Here is our scenario:

We are running a fleet of 50 ships around the world which never have an internet connetction, i.e. we have a huge "Air Gap".

On board we have one server with a network share "AVupdates" from which all workstations update themselves.

To get the latest updates on board and into the AVupdates folder we use the following:

1) In our office we run one management machine that daily updates the SAV folder, i.e. ....\CIDs\S000\SAVSCFXP

2) Every 4 to 8 weeks we create a CD (50 copies) with the latest state of the SAVSCFXP folder and add one "update.bat" file to this CD.

3) These CDs we send on board the ships.

4) On board, they insert the CD into one network computer, run "update.bat", and the whole SAVSCFXP folder is copied to "AVUpdates".

5) All client computers on board check "AVUpdates" once a day and update themselves.

Now, as we can provide updates only with 4 to 8 weeks delay, we do face infections from time to time. In a recent case we had to use some "offline cleaning CD", for which Sophis has the "Sophos Bootable Anti-Virus" solution created by means of sbvac.exe

We would now like to always include an up-to-date sbavc-created CD with the 4/8weekly update envelope.

However, as the SAVSCFXP only takes about 200MB max, and the sbavc-CD has only about 170MB, we could nicely make one combined Update-and-EmergencyBoot-CD by simply inlcuding the SAVSCFXP folder onto the sbavc-CD.

All that would be needed is the "-include" feature.

Alternatively, as the sbvac tool apparently works in several stages, we would need a version that stops just before calling mkisofs. Then we could let sbvac do the first steps (download and prepare the linux side of things, add the latest definitions ides.zip file), and then we can introduce our own step (copy the SVASCFXP folder to the temp area), and then call the final mksiofs step.

The benefit of either way would be that we can totally automate this whilst over the year preventing about 600 half-full CDroms to be "wasted". Not a huge financial impact of course, just "ugly" and not in line with our environmental attitudes.

Appreciate if the above could be considered, and of course comments on the idea.

brgds

blue

:5397


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  • Hi Blue and QC,

    My name is Shai Gelbaum and I am the product manager in charge of Sophos Bootable Anti-Virus(SBAV),

    Looking at the use case described, I can see the value in having an option to include additional content in the CD. I will need to check if some of our other customers in the shipping industry use a similar system and could benefit from this.

    There are plans to release a new version of SBAV in the first half of next year and I am now in the process of collecting requests to add to the new release and I will add it to the list.

    In the meantime have you looked at adding the folder to the ISO post creation? It is possible to just mount the ISO and add the folder in before burning.

    Hope this helps,

    Shai Gelbaum

    Product manager

    Oh and support do have better ways to raise feature requests, I think they were trying to get me off my backside

    :5421
Reply
  • Hi Blue and QC,

    My name is Shai Gelbaum and I am the product manager in charge of Sophos Bootable Anti-Virus(SBAV),

    Looking at the use case described, I can see the value in having an option to include additional content in the CD. I will need to check if some of our other customers in the shipping industry use a similar system and could benefit from this.

    There are plans to release a new version of SBAV in the first half of next year and I am now in the process of collecting requests to add to the new release and I will add it to the list.

    In the meantime have you looked at adding the folder to the ISO post creation? It is possible to just mount the ISO and add the folder in before burning.

    Hope this helps,

    Shai Gelbaum

    Product manager

    Oh and support do have better ways to raise feature requests, I think they were trying to get me off my backside

    :5421
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