I have set up a content filter at a small school. My users are unable to download a new installation of Avast or update existing versions. I have whitelisted avast.com, but according to my logs, the install and update seem to jump from IP to IP.
I could try an outside proxy, but my content server blocks most of these and the proxy list is updated nightly.
Does anyone know of a way to bypass this without completely opening the system.
Thanks
John
The file servers.def has the IP list of the servers used to update.
avast need to reach one of them to update, maybe you need to add files.avast.com in the whitelist.
Is servers.def a hidden file? Where is it? I have *.avast.com whitelisted
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\Setup\servers.def
ajohnpeters, welcome to the forum.
As you can probably see from the servers.def file, there are quite a few servers available for avast to download from, and that might be a very big headache for you to manually enter all the addresses personally.
I don’t know what type of “content filter” that you have setup, but there are a few that I use that work wonders with avast. I too manage schools.
Have you looked into http://www.untangle.com/home (Free network Gateway software), http://www.sonicwall.com (not free), or http://www.opendns.com (free DNS service that can block inappropriate material)?
I use all three, and I’m very impressed with them all. You can always use something like Websense, if you have the funds available, but using several “layers” of the free or cheap stuff will do just as good, if not better.
Don’t yell at me if you’re an expert, and this came out like I was explaining these services to a 3 year old, I just don’t know anything about your network yet, nor your credentials, so I’m starting from the ground-up. Hopefully something helps!
Sorry for the late reply. Newspaper in Aitkin MN had their server go down and the weekly is out tomorrow. It kinda took my priority.
I am using smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.com) with the school guardian product. I am using the transparent mode. When went with this because students have been using proxy servers to bypass our security. I just started looking at open DNS have not looked at the others. will do.
By they way, I do not feel you were talking down to me. Only Microsoft feels they can do that before I hang up.
John
Good, the smoothwall is a pretty good product. I haven’t looked at the the school guardian product yet, but I’m assuming they use Dansguardian lists or something like that. OpenDNS uses that too I believe (or Untangle, I forget which).
It just sounds odd that the sonicwall would try to block the avast update server addresses by default though. I’m wondering why you’d have to add them into you allow lists (unless of course you have it block everything, and only allow specific URL’s).