The F-Prot Antivirus Daemon Scanner:
The Daemon scanner differs from the Command-Line Scanner in the fact that it runs continuously.
As a result, the Daemon Scanner is the best solution for customers using third-party applications
that require a constant active scanner.
Technical Information:
The Daemon Scanner binds itself to a port on the loopback address. To request that the Daemon scan a file, a HTTP GET request is submitted to the active port, supplying the full path to the file to be scanned. The scanner accepts most of the same arguments as the Command-line version, although they must be encoded as a proper HTTP request, following a question mark and the file name, for instance:
GET /path/to/filename?arguments HTTP/1.0
The Daemon Scanner also supports persistant connections (i.e. HTTP/1.1) which can be useful for 3rd party applications that need to scan several files at once. The '-id' scanning options to the daemon can be used in conjunction with HTTP/1.1 requests to associate an id with each request.
The Daemon scanner is designed to automatically update itself by executing its own binary when a new version is in place. The newly executed copy is forced to bind to another port since the outdated process stays alive for about half a minute. This is done to guarantee that there is always at least one daemon available at any given time. Clients are expected to cycle through the port range to find a live daemon when the one they were previously using dies.
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