Setting up auto-updating

freshclam is the default database updater for Clam AntiVirus. It can work in two modes:

• interactive - from command line, verbosely
• daemon - alone, silently

When started by a superuser it drops privileges and switches to the clamav user. freshclam uses the database.clamav.net round-robin DNS which automatically selects a database mirror9.1. freshclam is an advanced tool: it supports database version verification through DNS, proxy servers (with authentication), digital signatures and various error scenarios. Quick test: run freshclam (as superuser) with no parameters and check the output. If everything is OK you may create the log file in /var/log (owned by clamav or another user freshclam will be running as (--user):

	# touch /var/log/clam-update.log
	# chmod 600 /var/log/clam-update.log
	# chown clamav /var/log/clam-update.log

Now you should edit the configuration file (freshclam.conf or clamd.conf if they're merged) and configure the UpdateLogFile directive to point to the created log file. Finally, to run freshclam in the daemon mode, execute:

	# freshclam -d

The other method is to use the cron daemon. You have to add the following line to the crontab of the root or clamav users:

N * * * *	/usr/local/bin/freshclam --quiet

to check for a new database every hour. N should be a number between 3 and 57 of your choice. Please don't choose any multiple of 10, because there are already too many clients using those time slots. Proxy settings are only configurable via the configuration file and freshclam will require strict permissions on the config file when HTTPProxyPassword is enabled.

	HTTPProxyServer myproxyserver.com
	HTTPProxyPort 1234
	HTTPProxyUsername myusername
	HTTPProxyPassword mypass