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I have never seen this before until today. Just a moment ago Software Updater displayed itself to me and said I have packages I need to update. Among them was ClamAV, which I have never installed. I did not click the update button and instead went to my command line and typed sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade and it showed less packages needing to be updated than in the Software Updater GUI.

Why is there a difference between what apt-get and what Software Updater think need to be updated? Why did my computer install ClamAV?

I did a thorough check before continuing with the Software Updater, and noticed that I don't have any form of ClamAV installed on my computer.

Why is Software Updater telling me I should update ClamAV if it isn't even installed to begin with? Do newer versions of Ubuntu now include ClamAV as part of the base installation?

I'm not against running ClamAV on my system, although I'm certain I have no need for anti-virus on my Linux machines, since they are secure through obscurity. What I am concerned about, though, is why the Ubuntu Software Updater is showing more updates than apt-get and why it is showing updates for software I do not have installed.

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  • Did you apt-get upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade? Have you installed anything new recently? What is the status on your firewall?
    – Seth
    Oct 9, 2013 at 20:21
  • 3
    Do you get any results from apt-cache rdepends --installed clamav? Anything that shows up in that list is likely the culprit.
    – cscarney
    Oct 9, 2013 at 20:35

1 Answer 1

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You asked "why?" and luckily there is a command that is called the same why in aptitude:

aptitude why clamav
i   cron         Suggests exim4 | postfix | mail-transport-agent
p   postfix      Suggests mail-reader                           
p   kmail-mobile Provides mail-reader                           
p   kmail-mobile Suggests clamav

As you can see, cron suggests postfix, which suggests mail-reader, which suggests kmail-mobile. This is in my specific case, in your's the reason might be even more obscure or bizarre. So, why did your update-manager decided to install clamav* package? The Update Manager doesn't use the same tactics as apt-get upgrade, rather it uses apt-get dist-upgrade which is more aggressive in trying to install and remove packages that you may (or may not) need.

I'm sure somewhere you have a a package of a recommendation of a recommendation of a suggestion that makes update-manager install some clamav related package and this at the same time pulls the entire clamav baggage.

aptitude why dansguardian clamav
p   dansguardian Depends clamav (>= 0.80)
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