Nanaz's Blog

Anti Virus is a software that very important for your pc. Nowadays every virus is developed by somebody to infect every computer in this world. Virus can infect one computer to another computer using several ways like send over the network or carrying by removable medium such as floppy disk, CD or USB drive. End User like us doesn't know when or how virus come to our computer. So we must prepare our PC with an antivirus software.

One of the most great antivirus software I used right now is AVG. its developed by Grisoft Corp. AVG provide us with two license free and share. With free license many people can use avg to protect their PC against the viruses.

I said before that many viruses developed by somebody ever day. If a new virus found, every antivirus software need to be updated to protect the PC. "No body perfect!!", may be that is the fact for every kind antivirus software. If the antivirus software not updated they will never know the new virus. It will waste the function of the software and your computer will infected by the new virus. To update the anti virus we need an internet connection. Usually the antivirus software will do the automatic update to download their virus definition file (file to be updated). Or if not we can download manually from the internet, save to removable drive and update the antivirus software manually. One virus definition file will ammount 10 to 12 MB.

The problem occured when many computer need to be updated. Like example in my office, there are about more than 200 computers and also i must update the antivirus software every week. I choose AVG because its stable and easy to update. But with limited of connection internet in my office is very hard to update AVG in every computer.

To resolve the problem i create my own update server. Oh i forgot to tell you. If you have avg shareware license you can use an application called AVG TCP Server provided by grisoft. You can download the application and create the update server. But if you do not have the shareware license you can use this article to create your own AVG update server.

Requirement

• Network (Local Area Network).
• One any kind PC for the server with OS installed (I use Fedora 4 in my Office). You can choose one OS likeMicrosoft Windows 98/XP/2003/Vista or Unix (Linux, FreeBsd, MAC). And also the PC must be accessed from another via network.
• A Web Server installed. You can use any kind of web server (I use Apache HTTP Server).

First thing to do you must know the update URL for AVG software. You can find the URL from the application in the update manager section, click settings, open the URL tab and find the URL from one of name listed. Example we choose update.grisoft.cz with http://update.grisoft.cz/softw/70/update for the URL.

AVG use the URL to put their update files on the internet. Extension of AVG update files is .bin. You cannot open the URL because it closed by admin for the file listing. The secret is AVG use one file called avg7info.ctf to give the information about the update files to the software so you can open the files with your browser, just type http://update.grisoft.cz/softw/70/update/avg7info.ctf to addressbar of your browser then it will display a text file like this :

AVG7 CTF Index File bin(u7avi1295u1293w8.bin) grp(avi:1295) len(57305) dep(avi:1293) tm(0804181900) pri(2) bin(u7avi1295u991w8.bin) grp(avi:1295) len(846434) dep(avi:991) tm(0804181900) pri(2)

With avg7info.ctf we can know how many files in the update server. you can download manually with your browser. Example you want to download the files called u7avi1295u1293w8.bin, then you just type http://update.grisoft.cz/softw/70/update/u7avi1295u1293w8.bin. You must download all the files listed in avg7info.ctf if you want your pc to be complete updated. And also you must save the avg7info.ctf file.

Second, prepare your webserver and connect it to the network. Create one directory to place your update files in root directory of your webserver. Example : if your webserver use /var/www directory for root directory create one directory called "update" (/var/www/update) and set permission directory to be accessed by the other PC. After that put all files that has been downloaded before include avg7info.ctf to the update directory. Now you can access the update directory from another computer with browser. Just type http://your web server ip/update in your web browser and you will see the update files.

Third, in the other computer, change the AVG URL in update manager settings (Update Manager >> settings >> URL tab >> add or edit) with your webserver IP or host and don't forget to put the "/update" at the back of the URL like this image bellow :

Dont forget to click OK twice to activate it. After that you must test the update server. Just click the update from your AVG software and choose the internet.

If the image above display from your avg software, your avg update server is running normally and you can update every PC in your LAN with no internet connection.

-Nz-