[LI] Disk defragmetation, virus & linux

[Rajesh Fowkar <rfowkar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

This for those who are worried about disk defragmentation & viruses under
linux.  Here is a question in the Tech Support column of Linux Magazine on-line
edition:

I would like to ensure that my disk drives are defragmented and protected
from nasty virii. What do I need to do? 
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Coming from a DOS/Windows world, it's easy to imagine that you must defragment
a hard disk  with some regularity to prevent your system's performance from
degrading over time. Thankfully, in the Linux world, we do not have to bother
with such things. The operating system itself will do "spring cleaning" when it
reaches its maximum mount count. You will see a message when your root and
other filesystems are mounted, claiming that the maximum mount count has been
reached and a check is being forced. This is Linux's kind way of telling you it
wants to take a look at things under the hood.

Although there are disk defragmentation utilities available for Linux
filesystems, they generally are not used because the operating system does
such a great job of maintaining itself over the long haul.

There have been lots of scares lately regarding unwanted gremlins that hide
inside  your system and attack it. The SuSE mailing list has carried warnings
of several e-mail attachment viruses, and some of them were exposed as hoaxes.
There is an anti-virus program which ships with SuSE 6.0 as part of the
commercial packages, but I have never used it. I have never had a Linux system
get corrupted or attacked by a virus, but I don't doubt that someone has
written a virus which will attack ext2 filesystems or the boot sector. Overall,
I do not feel so concerned regarding unwanted virii on a Linux system.

It is also important to remember that as long as you are not running as root, 
the amount of damage you can do to your system is limited. Even if you were to
somehow download a virus onto your computer, in theory the only things it could
attack would be programs and files in a single user's directory.

This question is there in the August issue of Linux Magazine. The articles in
this magazine are really good. Good competition for linux journal.

The on-line back issues can be downloaded from the www.linux-mag.com

 -- 
Rajesh(ALIAS Shriram)
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Kurtarkar Nagari, Bldg-C,
Flat No. T4, Third Floor,
Shantinagar(Santacruz), Ponda-Goa-403401
Ph. : (0832)315932
Email : rfowkar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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