This article describes the filesystems supported for on-access scanning on Linux platforms.
Known to apply to the following Sophos product(s) and version(s)
SAV for Linux 7.x
SAV for Linux 9.x
On-Access filesystem support
Good Filesystems
The following filesystems are known to work with Sophos Anti-Virus for Linux:
| Filesystem Name | Talpa Support? | Fanotify Support? |
| ecryptfs | Yes | Yes |
| ext2 | Yes | Yes |
| ext3 | Yes | Yes |
| ext4 | Yes | Yes |
| jfs | Yes | Yes |
| xfs | Yes | Yes |
| reiserfs | Yes | Yes |
| tmpfs | Yes | Yes |
| minix | Yes | Yes |
| smbfs | Yes | Yes |
| cifs | Yes | Yes |
| nfs | Yes | Yes |
| nfs4 | Yes | Yes |
| fuse | Yes | Yes |
| fuse | Yes | Yes |
| fuseblk | Yes | Yes |
| iso9660 | Yes | Yes |
| udf | Yes | Yes |
| msdos | Yes | Yes |
| vfat | Yes | Yes |
| ncpfs | Yes | Yes |
| ramfs | Yes | Yes |
Unsupported Filesystems
The following filesystems are unsupported. The majority of these are pseudo-filesystems that do not contain regular files and cannot be scanned.
| Filesystem Name | Talpa Support? | Fanotify Support? | Notes |
| rootfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| proc | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| usbfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| devpts | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| devfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| subfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| nfsd | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| sysfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| debugfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| securityfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| fusectl | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| rpc_pipefs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| selinuxfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| configfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| usbdevfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| nssadmin | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| nsspool | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| autofs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| inotifyfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| romfs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| binfmt_misc | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| aufs | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| mqueue | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
| cgroup | No | No | Pseudo-Filesystem |
fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon
| No | No | See KBA 118982 |
| overlayfs | No | No | See KBA 118088 |
Other Filesystems
Behaviour with other filesystems will depend on the on-access interception method:
- Talpa will attempt to intercept operations on any other filesystem. Talpa is the default method.
- Fanotify (Beta) will only scan files on the list of good filesystems