VM and Avast Anti-Virus

[nkaufman]

Hello,

Have a quick question on how to set up Anitvirus scanning on Guest.

My system – Win7 64-bit host and Win7 32-bit guest.

I have Avast running on host and have disabled scanning for File System – VB folder on hard drive and Web Scanning – virtualbox processes.

Have also added the VB folder location in Global Exclusions in Avast.

Did I do correctly or would you recommend something else?

Thanks,

[noteirak]

Do you also have Avast running in the guest then?

[nkaufman]

Do you also have Avast running in the guest then?

Yes I do.

Sorry for having missed that in the earlier post.

Am just trying to make sure that I am not over-doing anti-virus thing and crippling my VM..

[noteirak]

If it was me, and that's my own personal view of it, I would keep it to a single instance on the host, no antivirus in the guest.
But I don't have any backing up material on this, just my personal feeling :
- You keep it to a single AV instance
- You do not suffer from the virtualization overhead in the guest

[nkaufman]

Well, I'm trying to set up a VM just for web browsing purposes etc. So my host remains clean always. That way, I am not bothered about viruses etc. and can just revert my VM back to the snapshot that I had saved last. That is the reason I had Avast in my guest.

Do have a question about what is the best way to set up network configuration for this but do not want to contaminate this thread and will ask in a different thread.

Thanks for your help.

[Perryg]

So my host remains clean always

IMHO I would forget the virus software completely on the guest and instead get the guest working with all update and what ever you want/need and then set the guest immutable. That way every time you shut the guest down all is lost and no virus. Benefits are a faster running guest and no worries. When you need to update the guest you set it back to normal, update, then set it to immutable again.

[nkaufman]

IMHO I would forget the virus software completely on the guest and instead get the guest working with all update and what ever you want/need and then set the guest immutable. That way every time you shut the guest down all is lost and no virus. Benefits are a faster running guest and no worries. When you need to update the guest you set it back to normal, update, then set it to immutable again.

That is a nice idea. However, sometimes I need to download some files etc. What I do then is enable a shared folder, copy the file to my host, disable shared folder etc and continue with the saved state.

So what you're saying is right. One can do that only when the state is discarded everytime. I do not do that. I save the state and only when I'm ready to do some updates etc that would make me keep a snapshot that I revert back to the latest snapshot, make my updates and then make another snapshot.

[Perryg]

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.h ... magewrites

[nkaufman]

...manual/ch05.html#hdimagewrites

ok, will take a look and try and understand the material. If not, will be sure to ask for your assistance.

[jnl2]

@ nkaufman

I'm a newbie to the VM scene. My question to you then is are you now running an AV in your Guest?

Thanks.