SAINT Documentation
WWDSI
SAINT Home
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System Requirements

Although SAINT has not been tested on every UNIX platform, it will run on most flavors of UNIX. SAINT is very much a work in progress, and development efforts are ongoing. SAINT is an excellent security and discovery tool, and will become more robust as the development process continues. Please remember: your feedback is crucial to our efforts to make SAINT all it can be, so please feel free to send any comments or questions you may have to saint@wwdsi.com. Also, SAINT will become more portable as we expand our testing efforts to include different UNIX platforms.

Operating systems

Currently SAINT is known to work on the following Operating Systems:
  • SunOS 4.1.3_U1
  • SunOS 5.3 - 5.5.1 (Solaris 2.3 - 2.5.1)
  • IRIX 5.3 - 6.5.8
  • Linux
  • FreeBSD 4
In addition to the list above, WWDSI believes that SAINT will also work on the following operating systems, though no formal testing has been done:
  • Other SunOS versions
  • Other IRIX versions
  • AIX
  • BSD types
  • HP-UX
  • System V Release 4
  • Ultrix
  • Tru64
For a complete list of operating systems, try typing "make" at the UNIX prompt.

Hardware platforms

SAINT should run fine on any hardware platform running one of the operating systems listed above.

Disk space

SAINT itself only requires about 3 MB to compile and run. However, if PERL and a web browser are not already installed on the system, up to 70 MB of additional disk space could be required to install these packages. The exact requirement depends on the operating system type and the browser version. More space will also be required to install the optional utilities (NMAP and Samba) if they are to be used by SAINT. Of course, if the supplementary programs are already installed, it isn't necessary to reinstall them.

Memory

The amount of memory needed to properly run the SAINT program is dependent upon the number of hosts in the database or the number of hosts to be scanned when performing a SAINT evaluation. It should be stated that even a scan with minimal hosts requires a significant amount of memory. In the words of one SAINT developer, "SAINT is a real pig when it comes to memory". For a rough idea of what to expect, please see the lessons learned below:
  • A scan comprising approximately 1500 hosts, with approximately 18000 facts in the facts file, required approximately 14 megabytes of memory on a SPARC 4/75 running SunOS 4.1.3
  • A scan comprising approximately 4700 hosts, with about 150000 facts, required almost 35 megabytes of memory on an Indigo 2 platform
Needless to say, swapping is very painful if you don't have enough memory.

Other software tools required and where you can get them

WWDSI realizes that the supplementary software packages needed to run SAINT may not be pre-installed on the potential SAINT platform. To make life a bit easier, we have provided the links below to simplify the search for these supplementary packages:

The above links point to files on 3rd party systems. If you do not have an Internet connection, WWDSI does not have the resources at this point to distribute SAINT, or its required software tools, by any other means. It is conceivable that, at some point in the future, SAINT and these packages will be made available via tape or CD (though this will only happen if demand is high and if a 3rd party distributor could be found).

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