Clamd: Freshclam not running automatically

[snowweb]

Hi, I was under the impression that Freshclam was supposed to be automatically installed as a service and therefore to run automatically as required. Maybe I'm wrong, because when I check the Freshclam log, I noticed that it only updated once, which was when I installed it about a week ago and on that occasion, I ran it manually.

Please can someone tell me how to set this up as a service please or what the correct solution is?

Many thanks.

pete

[Rubberman]

Make sure your clamd service is started. I had this problem with my CentOS system previously. It works now, though I sometimes execute freshclam manually to make sure that everything is current.

[snowweb]

Make sure your clamd service is started. I had this problem with my CentOS system previously. It works now, though I sometimes execute freshclam manually to make sure that everything is current.

I checked that. It's running, but still not updating. Perhaps I should set up a cron to run freshclam every four hours?

The thing is, I thought Freshclam is already installed as a service, so I should not be setting up a cron.

Any thoughts on this please?

pete

[Rubberman]

Freshclam is not set up as a service, but clamd is. You might check your clamd.conf file in /etc however. I don't remember if I did anything special to get it to update regularly, to tell the truth. It does update now, though it didn't when I first installed it. I have the following clamav packages installed:

clamav
clamav-db
clamav-devel
clamav-milter (I think this is the one that does the updating)
clamd
fuse-clamfs

[snowweb]

Freshclam is not set up as a service, but clamd is. You might check your clamd.conf file in /etc however. I don't remember if I did anything special to get it to update regularly, to tell the truth. It does update now, though it didn't when I first installed it. I have the following clamav packages installed:

clamav
clamav-db
clamav-devel
clamav-milter (I think this is the one that does the updating)
clamd
fuse-clamfs

I've done some more research and found that it really is Freshclam that is responsible for updates and it can be either run from a cron or as a daemon by using the following command:

freshclam -d -c 4

I found this by typing:

freshclam --help

where it lists the parameters. -d is for daemon and -c is the number of checks per day (in my case, 4).

Unfortunately, even though I did that, when I did

service freshclam status

it says 'unrecognized service'.

I guess it's possible that depending on how this status works, that the status would only be returned if I managed to check for the status during one of the times when it is actually active (although my understanding of a service is that it's normally always running?)

All I can do is monitor the freshclam logs to see whether it is being updated.

Thanks for your help.

pete

[davidanand]

Hi,

when Clam is not updating it will show the status in verbose ..
what was the message you got while updating (freshclam)

[Rubberman]

Freshclam isn't a service in the normal sense, though clamd is. So asking the service interface the status of freshclam will return the error seen.

Ok. I looked in my cron.daily directory, and there is an entry for freshclam there. Its contents are as follows:

#!/bin/sh

### A simple update script for the clamav virus database.
### This could as well be replaced by a SysV script.

### fix log file if needed
LOG_FILE="/var/log/clamav/freshclam.log"
if [ ! -f "$LOG_FILE" ]; then
    touch "$LOG_FILE"
    chmod 644 "$LOG_FILE"
    chown clamav.clamav "$LOG_FILE"
fi

/usr/bin/freshclam \
    --quiet \
    --datadir="/var/clamav" \
    --log="$LOG_FILE" \
    --daemon-notify="/etc/clamd.conf"

[Rubberman]

As for clamav-milter, that is for mail scanning.

[snowweb]

Think this is fixed now. Thanks for all your help.

Remember earlier I did:

freshclam -d -c 4

well I just checked my freshclam.log and found that ever since, it has been updating

You're right about it not being a service in itself. The above command seems to instruct clamd which IS running as a service, to initiate freshclam at the designated intervals.

The documentation concerning this is pretty shocking, considering how long it's been around... bring on the competition! That's what I say.

Thanks again.

pete

[signmem]

I recompile clamav myself. and use crond job update database everyday.

^__^