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FreshClam: Setting up auto-updating

The freshclam utility is the default database updater for Clam AntiVirus. It works in two modes: When started by the superuser it drops the privileges, by default it works as clamav. freshclam downloads the database from the Clam AntiVirus homepage and checks its consistency using MD5 sum. process for Clam AntiVirus. Run freshclam (as root) without any parameters to check is it working correctly. If everything is OK, create the log file in /var/log owned by clamav:
	# touch /var/log/clam-update.log
	# chmod 600 /var/log/clam-update.log
	# chown clamav /var/log/clam-update.log
Now you can run freshclam as a daemon:
	# freshclam -d -c 2 -l /var/log/clam-update.log
It will check for a new database 2 times a day. Please add the above line to your startup scripts. The other way is to use the cron daemon. You have to add a similar line to the crontab of root or clamav:
0 8	* * *	/usr/local/bin/freshclam --quiet -l /var/log/clam-update.log
It will check for a new database daily at 8 am. You may need to setup the proxy support on your system. You should set the environment variable $http_proxy, eg.
	export http_proxy="my.proxy.server:8080"
There is also -http-proxy and -proxy-user option available.


next up previous contents
Next: FreshClam: Mirrors and mirrors.txt Up: Installation Previous: Testing   Contents
Tomasz Kojm 2003-06-21