Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux: Using a custom built or unsupported kernel
The on-access scanning component of Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux requires several kernel modules to be installed and loaded.
Sophos provides precompiled binary packs for 'supported' kernel versions. However, if either of the following apply:
- you want to enable the on-access scanning component, and are running an 'unsupported' kernel
- you have recompiled your kernel at any point
the Sophos
Note: Sophos
What to do
1. Technical requirements
Before you run the installer, to enable it to compile custom kernel modules, you must have the following installed:
- The kernel source matching your running kernel (normally accessible from /lib/modules/'uname -r'/build/)
- A system.map file matching your running kernel (normally located in /boot/System.map-'uname -r')
- GCC and configured development tools, e.g. 'make'. (The version of GCC must be the same as the one used to compile your kernel.)
Some distributions (such as Debian) provide a kernel headers package. These distributions also provide all the required kernel sources to compile.
2. Running the installer
Once the above components are installed, you can run the Sophos
3. Using a non-default GCC version
If a non-default GCC version was used for kernel compilation, you must use the same version when compiling Talpa.
The recommended way of doing this is to create a file named build.options in <installation directory>/talpa/override/. This file should contain a single line listing options which are directly passed to Talpa's configure script. In this particular case, something like 'CC=gcc-kernel' should be added, where 'gcc-kernel' is a GCC binary used for kernel compilation.
4. Troubleshooting
If the installer cannot compile the kernel modules, a log file is created at
/opt/sophos-av/log/talpaselect.log
which details the problem.
If this occurs, please forward the log file to Sophos technical support, along with the following information:
- Kernel version (uname -r)
- GCC version (gcc --version)
- Kernel log since last boot (the output of the dmesg command).
If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.
- Article ID: 13503
- Created: 12 Aug 2005
- Last updated: 15 Oct 2008
