MacFormat 1995 April/macformat-023.iso/Disinfectant/Disinfectant.rsrc/STR#_229.txt

Text File | 1994-04-02 | 8.7 KB | 339 lines







2



2





åSpecial Features





In this section we discuss various advanced features of Disinfectant,

technical topics, and other miscellaneous items.



• It is very important to realize that detecting and repairing infected files

is quite complicated and it is highly likely that there are some rare cases

we do not handle properly. Read the disclaimer at the beginning of this

manual and take it seriously.



• Disinfectant is “modeless.” This means several things. You can have

multiple windows open at the same time, you can use desk accessories,

and you can use application switching. You can start a scan and switch to

some other application and the scan will continue in the background. You

can do just about anything except start another scan while a scan is in

progress. You can read the manual in the Help window, adjust options in

the Preferences window, use the online help facility, admire the About

window, etc.



• Disinfectant requires a Mac 512KE or later model and system 6.0 or

later. If you try to run Disinfectant on a Mac which does not meet these

requirements, it will present an error message alert and quit.



• Disinfectant is 32-bit clean and may be run under A/UX.



• Disinfectant can scan in the background. The Notification Manager is

used to notify you if an infection is discovered or if Disinfectant requires

attention for some other reason.



• Disinfectant can scan and repair both MFS and HFS disks. Single-sided

400K floppies are usually in MFS format, whereas other disks are usually

in HFS format.



• Disinfectant tries to perform careful error checking. E.g., it properly

reports disk full errors on attempts to save files, out of memory errors,

and errors on attempts to disinfect “busy” and “damaged” files. The

summary at the end of the report tells you if there were any errors. All

error messages and messages reporting infected files begin with “###,”

to make them easy to find in the report.



• Disinfectant has a “preferred” memory partition of 1000K and a

“minimum” memory partition of 300K. On 1 megabyte Macintoshes

running System 6 with MultiFinder, there is not enough memory to

allocate the preferred partition and you will have to run with the smaller

minimum partition. The large memory partition is desirable because some

applications use surprisingly large resources and Disinfectant must have

enough memory to load them and check them for viruses.



• Unfortunately, it is not possible to use the Finder’s Get Info command to

change Disinfectant’s memory partition. Because Disinfectant is an

anti-viral program, we went to great lengths to make it difficult for other

programs to modify the Disinfectant file. The memory partition size is

stored as a resource on the file and the Finder is not allowed to change it.



This should not be a problem. The preferred 1000K partition should be

more than enough memory to scan and disinfect even very unusual files

with very large resources. If you do happen to get an error message or

alert telling you that Disinfectant does not have enough memory, you can

try running Disinfectant again under System 6 Finder instead of

MultiFinder. Under Finder in System 6, Disinfectant is allocated the

maximum possible amount of available memory. The partition size is

ignored in this case.



• Disinfectant may be used to scan AppleShare server disks and remote

disks on a TOPS network. For the best results, however, we recommend

that you remove servers and shared disks from production and scan them

using the Mac to which they are directly connected. This is the only way

to avoid file busy errors, insufficient privileges errors, and other

problems. Scanning a local disk is also much faster than scanning a disk

over a network. This is also the only way to scan the Server folder on an

AppleShare server disk.



One problem with System 6 AppleShare server disks is that they use a

different kind of “desktop” file than is used on regular disks. If the

server disk contains a large number of applications, it may not be possible

to start up the server using a regular startup disk. (The Finder will bomb

or hang during the process of building its version of the Desktop file.) You

can avoid this problem by creating a special Virus Tools startup floppy

that contains a copy of Apple’s “Desktop Manager” startup document file.

Use this special startup floppy only for scanning System 6 AppleShare

servers.



On a TOPS network, we have noticed that TOPS sometimes beeps and

flashes an alert intermittently while scanning with Disinfectant. The

problem is not serious. It is annoying, but it does not interfere with the

scan.



• Viruses sometimes damage applications in such a way that they cannot

be run at all. Sometimes viruses only partially infect files. It is also

possible for a file to be infected by more than one virus. In most of these

special cases, Disinfectant is able to repair the files. If it is impossible

for Disinfectant to properly repair such a file, an appropriate error

message is issued. Consult the section in this manual titled “Error

Messages” for detailed information on what each message means and for

advice on what to do if you get an error message.



• Disinfectant may be installed on a server and used by more than one

person simultaneously.



• Disinfectant may be used on Macs with no hard drive and only a single

floppy drive. In this minimal configuration, you need to use your Virus

Tools disk.



Start up Disinfectant from your Virus Tools disk. Disinfectant will run

automatically. Click the Eject button to eject your startup disk. Use the

floppy drive to insert the disks you wish to scan or disinfect.



When you eject the startup disk, we preload the information Disinfectant

needs to do scanning from the disk. This minimizes “floppy shuffling” on

these systems. Disinfectant displays a dialog telling you to “Please wait”

while it does this preloading, which can take quite some time. Please be

patient.



• Printing is possible on a Mac with no hard drive, but it requires a

special startup disk. The problem is that printing requires extra disk

space for the printer driver files and ImageWriter spool files. There isn’t

enough free disk space for these files on a normal 800K startup disk.



To solve this problem, you should prepare a special printing startup disk

containing a copy of the 6.0.5 System file, a copy of Disinfectant, and the

appropriate printer driver files. For ImageWriter printing, you need the

file named “ImageWriter.” For LaserWriter printing, you need the two

files named “Laser Prep” and “LaserWriter.” Use original locked Apple

System Software release disks for your copies of the System file and the

printer driver files.



Do not include a copy of the Finder file on this special printing startup

disk! Eliminating the Finder file is the trick which creates enough extra

disk space to make printing possible.



After you have copied all of the files mentioned above to your printing

startup disk, use the Font/DA Mover to install the fonts you wish to use

for printing. For ImageWriter printing, we suggest that you include at

least the Geneva 10 font. For LaserWriter printing, we suggest that you

include at least the Palatino 10 and Helvetica 10 fonts. In any case, you

also need Geneva 9 and Chicago 12 for the proper display of text on the

screen.



After you have installed your fonts, click the Disinfectant icon to select it

and then use the Finder’s Set Startup command to set Disinfectant as the

startup application for this disk.



Do not lock your printing startup disk. The Chooser does not work with

locked startup disks. Printing to ImageWriters also requires an unlocked

startup disk.



Start up your Macintosh using the printing startup disk you just created.

The Disinfectant application should open automatically. Use the Chooser

desk accessory to select the printer you wish to use.



With this printing startup disk, you should be able to use all the features

of Disinfectant, including printing.



It is not possible to print all of the Disinfectant manual at one time on an

ImageWriter using this printing startup disk. We suggest that you print the

manual in 10 or 15 page sections. For example, use the Print command to

print pages 1 through 10. After the first 10 pages have been printed, use

the Print command again to print pages 11 through 20, and so on.



When you quit Disinfectant, you will get an alert saying that the Finder is

“busy or damaged.” This is normal with the printing startup disk. Click

the Restart button to restart using some other floppy startup disk.