About OpenVAS-Client
OpenVAS-Client is a terminal and GUI client application for both OpenVAS and Nessus. It implements the Nessus Transfer Protocol (NTP). The GUI is implemented using GTK+ 2.4 and allows for managing network vulnerability scan sessions.
OpenVAS-Client is a successor of NessusClient 1.X. The fork happened with NessusClient CVS HEAD 20070704. The reason was that the original authors of NessusClient decided to stop active development for this (GTK-based) NessusClient in favor of a newly written QT-based version released as proprietary software.
OpenVAS-Client is released under GNU GPLv2 and may be linked with OpenSSL.
Supported Languages
(status of 2.0-beta1, 2008-09-29)
- English: 100%
- German: 99%
- Spanish: 99%
- French: 99%
- Swedish: 88%
- Hebrew: 79%
- Croatian: 42%
Installing OpenVAS-Client
Recommended: Once you have installed OpenVAS-Client, you should subscribe to the openvas-announce mailing list. It is a low-traffic list which helps you to follow all OpenVAS news and important changes.
Readily available installation package
Debian "Sid" (unstable) and "Lenny" (testing)
OpenVAS-Client is an official Debian package for the distribution "unstable" ("Sid) and "testing" ("Lenny"). You can find more information about the Debian packages on the OpenVAS-Client package page for Sid and the OpenVAS-Client package page for Lenny.
This means you can simply install OpenVAS-Client on Debian Sid or Debian Lenny with the following command:
# apt-get install openvas-client
Debian 4.0 "Etch" (stable)
OpenVAS-Client is not an official package for the Debian 4.0 release ("Etch"). To enable you to easily run OpenVAS-Client on Debian Etch, the OpenVAS project provides backports for Etch. You can install OpenVAS-Client on Debian Etch by following these steps:
Select the following resource and add the line to the file /etc/apt/sources.list on your system:
deb http://apt.intevation.de/ etch openvas
Then, update your package list and install OpenVAS-Client:
# apt-get update
# apt-get install openvas-client
Note: If you know of further sources for backports, let the OpenVAS team know and they will be added to this list.
Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex"
OpenVAS-Client has already been added to the upcoming Ubuntu 8.10 release ("Intrepid Ibex") which is scheduled for release in October 2008. You can find more information about the Ubuntu package on the OpenVAS Client package page for Intrepid Ibex.
This means you can simply install OpenVAS-Client on Ubuntu 8.10 with the following command:
# apt-get install openvas-client
Note: Backported packages are also available for the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS release ("Hardy Heron"). To install OpenVAS-Client on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, simply follow the instructions for Debian 4.0 "Etch" as described above.
Gentoo
Please see the installation instructions for Gentoo on the OpenVAS-Server page.
OpenSUSE 10.2
In the download area you will find the file openvas-client-N.N.N-M.suse102.openvas.i586.rpm where N.N.N stands for the version of OpenVAS-Client and M for the package release number.
The corresponding source RPM files are named openvas-client-N.N.N-M.suse102.openvas.src.rpm. You will need these files only if you plan to rebuild the actual installation package.
OpenSUSE 10.2, 10.3, 11.0 (also Fedora 8, 9 and Mandriva 2007, 2008)
There is an unofficial repository containing RPMs for 10.2, 10.3 and 11.0 at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/bitshuffler:/openvas/.
See http://en.opensuse.org/Add_Package_Repositories_to_YaST on how to add a repository and http://opensuse-community.org/Installing_Software on how to install Software with YaST.
Fedora 8
In the download area you will find the file openvas-client-N.N.N-M.fc8.openvas.i586.rpm where N.N.N stands for the version of OpenVAS-Client and M for the package release number.
The corresponding source RPM files are named openvas-client-N.N.N-M.fc8.openvas.src.rpm. You will need these files only if you plan to rebuild the actual installation package.
Windows XP SP2
In the download area you will find the file OpenVAS-Client-N.N.N-M-LL-setup.exe where N.N.N stands for the version of OpenVAS-Client, M for the package release number and LL for the language (e.g. en=English, de=German, sv=Swedish).
Latest source code release
The download link for the latest source code release can be found in the "Download" box to the right.
Download the ".tar.gz" source code archive and unpack with "tar -xzf openvas-client-N.N.N.tar.gz". Compiling from source is currently geared towards GNU/Linux systems, but may work as well in other environments.
Now read the README file inside the new directory for further instructions.
Most current state of development (directly from the source code management system)
After checking out the code, change to the new directory and follow the instructions in the README file.
Stable 1.0 branch
You need subversion to retrieve the code:
$ svn checkout https://svn.wald.intevation.org/svn/openvas/branches/openvas-client-1-0
Current state of development
$ svn checkout https://svn.wald.intevation.org/svn/openvas/trunk/openvas-client
Although the OpenVAS team is committed to maintaining a high code quality, please be aware that you are using a development state that may be incomplete and unstable and should not be used in production environments.