Installing ClamAV with MailScanner

Installing ClamAV is fairly straightforward*. These instructions will configure ClamAV to use the clamd daemon which is more efficient than running clamav alone.**

• Make sure clamavconnector is NOT installed in WHM > Manage Plugins.
  
  
• If you would like to verify ClamAV's digital signatures on the virus definition files as they are updated through freshclam, you need to install GMP first:
  /scripts/ensurerpm gmp gmp-devel
  
  
• Next you will need to create a user for clamav to use:
  useradd clamav
  Some OS's require you to add the group as well:
  groupadd clamav
  Don't worry if the user and/or group already exist.
  
  
• Download the latest stable ClamAV distribution from http://www.clamav.net
  Note: If you are running Fedora Core 4 or earlier, you cannot install any version of ClamAV later than 0.91.2 because of a broken gcc.
  
  
• Expand the distribution and cd into the resultant directory and build ClamAV using:
  tar -xzf clamav-*
  cd clamav*
  ./configure --disable-zlib-vcheck
  make
  make install
  
  
• pico -w /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf
  Comment out the line (put a # as the first character on the line) near the top that says simply:
  Example
  
  
• pico -w /usr/local/etc/clamd.conf
  Comment out the line (put a # as the first character on the line) near the top that says simply:
  Example
  
  
• pico -w /usr/local/etc/clamd.conf
  Change the following line:
  LocalSocket /tmp/clamd.socket
  to this:
  LocalSocket /tmp/clamd
  
  
• Run ldconfig to create the necessary links and cache to most recent shared libraries
  ldconfig
  
  
• Run freshclam to download the latest definitions:
  freshclam
  
  
• Set up the clamd init file and service:
  /bin/cp -fv contrib/init/RedHat/clamd /etc/init.d/clamd
  chown root:root /etc/init.d/clamd
  chmod +x /etc/init.d/clamd
  chkconfig clamd on
  service clamd restart
  
  
• pico -w /etc/chkserv.d/clamav
  Add the following line:
  service[clamav]=x,x,x,service clamd restart,clamd,root
  
  
• Create an empty log file for clamav updates:
  touch /var/log/clam-update.log
  chown clamav:clamav /var/log/clam-update.log
  
• Add clamav to chkservd so that it will be monitored:
  pico -w /etc/chkserv.d/chkservd.conf
  clamav:1
  
  
• At this point you can setup clamd in the MailScanner configuration:
  pico -w /usr/mailscanner/etc/MailScanner.conf
  Virus Scanners = clamd
  
  
• Then restart MailScanner with:
  service MailScanner restart
  
  
• You can now set what domains you want scanned for viruses in:
  /usr/mailscanner/etc/rules/virus.scanning.rules
  or in the WHM MailScanner Front-End if you have purchased it.

That's it. If you don't feel confident doing any of this yourself, or if you get into a horrible mess, we offer a cheap package to do it all for you, and more, over here.

*Remember that adding virus scanning of emails to MailScanner will add load to your server.

**If you want to use the Mail::ClamAV perl module, follow the instructions above and then follow the steps in this FAQ. Do note that Mail::ClamAV is not always updated when ClamAV is updated and there can be compatibility issues which can actually break MailScanner. (This is the primary reason we switched to using clamd rather than clamavmodule.)