Hi everyone,

I read that there is possible to use VirusZ on MorphOS:

https://www.vht-dk.dk/amiga/vz/vz.htm

Has anyone tried this? Are there any other alternatives?

Have not had a virus checker installed on my MorphOS setup before. Having old files stored on the HD, I definitely should have had something like this setup earlier.

Thanks in advance for recommendations.

Never used one on MorphOS.

I guess the lack of capable developers and the low amount of systems make this kind of thing unattractive to anyone.



[ Edited by geit 30.09.2021 - 17:03 ]

I've been using VirusZ on MorphOS... not regularly, but occasionally checked files with it during the years. As far as I can see it works just fine.

> I read that there is possible to use VirusZ on MorphOS:
> https://www.vht-dk.dk/amiga/vz/vz.htm
> Has anyone tried this?

Some years old (and thus using VirusZ v1.02 from 2004 instead of the new v1.04b) but still useful:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=53&topic_id=11409&start=29

My understanding is that VirusZ worked just fine with MorphOS already before the recent update.

In fact, the most difficulty originated from the xvs.library: Years ago it would not work properly on MorphOS. Over the years I reported and Georg fixed all those issues. I think the recent changes are mostly making it work on other amigoid systems.

Regarding usability of VirusZ / xvs.library:

I think it's great that you can use MorphOS to run these tools. After all I know several people who manage 68k software libraries with their MorphOS systems. However, realistically I see no reason to run VirusZ on the background all the time.

Regarding MorphOS and 68k viruses:

MorphOS retains many of the 68k OS interfaces, and some 68k amiga linkviruses might very well work under MorphOS, at least if they don't resort into some nasty tricks. Most of them likely will result in a crash however. They of course would only be able to infect 68k amiga binaries.


[ Edited by Piru 01.10.2021 - 01:10 ]

> My understanding is that VirusZ worked just fine with
> MorphOS already before the recent update.

Yes, at least the changes from v1.03b to v1.04b do not indicate any MorphOS-relevant change. Unfortunately, the changes from public v1.02 (2004) to non-public v1.03b (2006) are not public either. There may have been MorphOS-relevant improvements in v1.03b (as there were in non-public xvs.library v33.43 from 2006, or so I guess since it was you who reported that issue), so that MorphOS users upgrading from v1.02 to v1.04b can now benefit from these.

I used VirusZ on MorphOS from the earliest days I owned it (2003). It works fine. It always worked fine.

I encountered Amiga viruses just twice during my two decades of using an Amiga - Mount and Lamer Exterminator, one from a disk I got with a 2nd hand A1200, and one from a DMS'd demo that came with a HDD. They were historically rare beasts, encountered rarely in BBS days, and almost never beyond that.

Bootblock and boot sector viruses make no sense on MorphOS, so you're immune. As Piru said, link viruses may still function on MorphOS but they were even rarer beasts than most Amiga viruses.

Skip it.

> Mount and Lamer Exterminator […] were historically rare beasts,
> encountered rarely in BBS days, and almost never beyond that.

In case of Lamer Exterminator, I remember differently.

> link viruses […] were even rarer beasts than most Amiga viruses.

Also here, I think that most hard disk users' experience was different.

Quote:

I guess BBS piracy was much bigger in Germany.

Some link viruses got popular. Not sure about the very recent years, but at least for two decades there wasn't a year you couldn't find HNY96 or HNY98 virus in new demoscene productions. They were already infected on authors' machines and then found from BBSes and public download pages in Internet.

My main Amiga setup also got infected quite badly once... the machine started to act weirdly at boot and then I found that many of the shell commands and other executables were infected by the HNY96 virus.


[ Edited by jPV 15.10.2021 - 15:46 ]

> Some link viruses got popular. […] My main Amiga setup
> also got infected quite badly once...

In recent years, I had my MorphOS system infected with an Amiga link virus. Of course, it did affect only m68k binaries. I only noticed it years after the initial infection happened (retraceable by looking at the file dates) when I was comparing the installed ReAction classes with those on my OS3.9 CD. I noticed that the files on the HD were bigger than those on the CD. Viewing the bigger files in hex mode revealed the infection. VirusZ then found all the m68k binaries that got executed or accessed during those years to be infected. I could retrace the infection to a time when I used to test loads of m68k software from Aminet for MorphOS compatibility (so nothing to do with piracy should anyone suspect this).
Unfortunately, I forgot which link virus it was, but I remember it was a well-known one (it may indeed have been one of the HNY variants).