Install ClamAV and Configure Daily Scanning on CentOS

ClamAV is an open source (GPL) antivirus engine designed for detecting Trojans, viruses, malware and other malicious threats on Linux. 

In this article, we will only be configuring ClamAV to run scheduled/on-demand scans; not resident scans.

1. Install EPEL repo

Before we can do proceed, you must ensure that you have the EPEL yum repository enabled.

CentOS 6 – 32-bit

1	rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

CentOS 6 – 64-bit

1	rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

CentOS 5 – 32-bit

1	rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

 CentOS 5 – 64-bit

1	rpm -Uvh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

After running the above commands for your relevant CentOS version, the following file is created:

/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

The above file can be edited directly to enable or disable the EPEL repo.

 2. Install required ClamAV packages

1	yum install clamav clamd

3. Start the clamd service and set it to auto-start

1	/etc/init.d/clamd on

2	chkconfig clamd on

3	/etc/init.d/clamd start

4. Update ClamAV’s signatures

1	/usr/bin/freshclam

Note: ClamAV will update automatically, as part of /etc/cron.daily/freshclam.

B. Configure Daily Scan

In this example, we will configure a cronjob to scan the /home/ directory every day:

1. Create cron file:

1	vim /etc/cron.daily/manual_clamscan

Add the following to the file above. Be sure to change SCAN_DIR to the directory that you want to scan:

1	#!/bin/bash

2	SCAN_DIR="/home"

3	LOG_FILE="/var/log/clamav/manual_clamscan.log"

4	/usr/bin/clamscan -i -r $SCAN_DIR >> $LOG_FILE

Give our cron script executable permissions:

1	chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/manual_clamscan

You can even run the above script to ensure that it works correctly.

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