Re: Anti virus scanning for Postgres database servers

On Tue, 2025-09-23 at 08:03 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 08:22:51AM +0200, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> > On Mon, 2025-09-22 at 13:03 -0700, soumen rana wrote:
> > > This will mean that the Postgres Installation directories and files will be
> > > scanned by Microsoft Defender and quarantine any threats.
> > >
> > > We have requested to exclude the data directories from the Antivirus scanning.
> > > Is anyone aware of any performance,  operational, or data-loss related
> > > challenges with Anti Virus scanning of Postgres binaries?
> >
> > I think that should be safe, at least until Microsoft starts to perceive
> > PostgreSQL as a threat...
>
> Uh, if the anti-virus software does not modify any files, you are likely
> to get false positives when the antivirus software thinks Postgres data
> is a virus.  If the anti-virus software modifies the data directory in
> any way, you are likely to get database corruption or a non-operational
> database.

Absolutely.  I was commenting the suggestion to exempt the data directory
from the virus scan and only scan the PostgreSQL binaries.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe