Re: update plugins question

On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 07:59:14AM -0700, Larry wrote:

> Can someone give me the details of what happens each time
> nessus-update-plugins runs? It appears that each plugin is re-loaded when
> the script runs.  Are all plugins re-written or just the new ones
> added/appended? Is there a control file that keeps track of this?

nessus-update-plugins has the "-vv" option to enable verbose debugging
output. You can use this to see what's going on.

Essentially, though, what happens is that the script first checks
whether your copy of the plugins is current. If not, it downloads the
latest tarball, verifies its authenticity, extracts the contents into
the plugins directory, and finally sends a HUP signal to the main
nessusd process to cause it to reload. There's a lot of other stuff and
the behaviour is slightly different in older versions, but this should
give you the main gist.

Since the tarball is extracted in the plugins directory, existing
plugins are overwritten each time but any files that do not exist in the
tarball are not removed.

> Also, how do plugin subscriptions affect the way the script runs?

They just affect which tarball you get.

George
-- 
theall@tenablesecurity.com
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