How can I update Clam Antivirus via the terminal?
I already have installed clamav
, but I want to know how can I update the virus database.
To update the ClamAV database do sudo freshclam
.
NAME
freshclam - update virus databases
SYNOPSIS
freshclam [options]
DESCRIPTION
freshclam is a virus database update tool for ClamAV.
For offline update, you can also directly download virus definition from database: main, daily and then put them into /var/lib/clamav
(remove old files).
sudo lsof /var/log/clamav/freshclam.log
said that. I killed the process using sudo pkill -15 -x freshclam
. Problem solved.
Jul 30, 2018 at 7:13
Run sudo apt-get install clamav
.
Once ClamAv is installed you can set up a script for right click virus scanning in Nautilus.
To update the virus database, open a terminal and enter the following command:
sudo freshclam
To automate this update you can set up a cron job. I'll show how to update the virus database every day at 8:57 AM. First, open the terminal and su to root.
sudo su
Now you need to modify the crontab for the root user.
crontab -e
This opens the root crontab file in the nano text editor. Add the following line
57 08 * * * freshclam
to the crontab and then hit Ctrl+X to exit. Answer yes when prompted to save the file.
clamav-freshclam
service takes care of updating the definitions (as of 15.04 for sure, possibly as early as 12.04). For Nautilus integration, install clamtk-nautilus
(and restart nautilus)
/usr/bin/freshclam -d --foreground=true
is running that updates once an hour. Running freshclam
even returns an error because the freshclam's logfile is locked.
The right way to go is to edit freshclam.conf and add the number of dayly Checks you want
vim /etc/clamav/freshclam.conf
Checks 24
##Notify clamd to reload it self
NotifyClamd /etc/clamav/clamd.conf
Checks 24
parameter by default on Ubuntu 16.04...
Sep 9, 2018 at 15:25
How to update clamtk (all steps) / clamav (steps 1-3)
NOTE: Read each line before you willy nilly start typing things in Terminal to understand what you are doing to the system.
Remove potentially bad AV installations:
sudo apt-get remove clamav clamtk freshclam
sudo apt-get autoremove
Reinstall AV
sudo apt-get install clamav -y # *(Terminal Version)*
sudo apt-get install clamtk -y # *(GUI version)*
Update AV Database
sudo freshclam # *(takes ~30 minutes to download definitions)*
Configure AV & Scan: This example uses only clamtk
clamtk # (Opens GUI)*
toggle all options beneath settings tab "Network"
http://127.0.0.1
"Update Assistant"
"Scan a Directory"
/root
or /usr
).Final Note: typing the phrase clamav --help
gives some hints. -y
is the same thing as saying yes to installing all dependencies for package. If -y
causes issues then exclude and manually press y
key when prompted.
This is what I had to do to get clam working, perhaps a glitch for both clamtk and clamav (problem with both). Hope this helps someone else!
in China, the great firewall blocks, so can use only the download files. you can try setting the sever to cn in the freshclam.conf file, but the update will take days. direct download works to get the definitions.
$ service clamav-freshclam stop
and then:$ sudo freshclam
and again,$ service clamav-freshclam start