ClamAV Packages

Many Linux and Unix distributions offer one or more ClamAV packages to make it easy for you to install ClamAV.

These packages are usually well maintained but if you find an issue with one, please consider helping the volunteers that maintain the packages.

Disclaimer: ClamAV packages may vary somewhat from the upstream version. Some examples:

The database and application config paths may vary:

A default from-source install will go in /usr/local, with:

applications in /usr/local/bin

daemons in /usr/local/sbin

libraries in /usr/local/lib

headers in /usr/local/include

configs in /usr/local/etc/

databases in /usr/local/share/clamav/

A Linux package install will probably go in /usr, with:

applications in /usr/bin

daemons in /usr/sbin

libraries in /usr/lib

headers in /usr/include

configs in /etc/clamav

databases in /var/lib/clamav

As of 0.103.x, a from-source install requires the user create a config for FreshClam, ClamD, and ClamAV-Milter in order to use each application. A package install, however, is likely to come pre-configured. Users may wish to modify the configs as needed.

Package installs sometimes carry extra patches for issues affecting their distribution, for issues the ClamAV developers haven't had time to fix or are unaware of, and for security issues when distributing older versions that are no longer maintained by the ClamAV developers.

Some distributions parcel up ClamAV components into separate packages. You don't necessarily need all of the packages. If this applies to your package system, you may need to review the applications described in the scanning instructions to understand which features you will need.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to all of the volunteers who maintain these packages! We appreciate your help!

The Packages

Debian

Debian splits up ClamAV into a selection of different packages.

Realistically, you probably only need to apt install clamav and probably apt install clamav-daemon. If you require support for scanning compressed RAR files you first need to enable the "non-free" archive.*

The full list of packages includes:

clamav - command-line interface
clamav-base - base package
clamav-daemon - scanner daemon
clamav-docs - documentation
clamav-freshclam - virus database update utility
clamav-milter - sendmail integration
clamdscan - A command-line client for clamd similar to clamscan
clamav-testfiles - test files
libclamav-dev - development files
libclamav9 - library
libclamunrar9 - unrar support

* RAR Support: ClamAV's RAR support comes from UnRAR, which is open-source but not entirely free in so far as its license restricts users from reverse engineering it to create RAR archives. For this reason, it is bundled separately in the "non-free" archive. Enable it by adding "non-free" to /etc/apt/sources.list. Eg:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

Then you can install the RAR-plugin using: apt install libclamunrar9

There are a variety of other ClamAV related projects as well. Run apt search clamav to see a larger list.

To test the installation, you can try to scan the test files in the clamav-testfiles package.

Note: Debian packages are maintained by Debian's ClamAV Team.

The package maintainers can be reached at clamav-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org. More info at tracker.debian.org/pkg/clamav.

Patches: https://salsa.debian.org/clamav-team/clamav/tree/unstable/debian/patches

Ubuntu

Ubuntu's ClamAV packages are derived from the Debian packages (above). See the Debian instructions for installation details.

RAR Support: As with Debian, RAR support is not included in the base package. Users that desire RAR support will have to install libclamunrar9 separately. Unlike with Debian, there is no need to enable "non-free" packages for this to work.

Note: Ubuntu packages are curated by Ubuntu Developers. Package source: https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/clamav

openSUSE

openSUSE provides two packages:

clamav - The clamav package
clamav-devel - The clamav package plus headers for software development.

RPM download

Find these packages at under http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security Eg.:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security/openSUSE_Leap_15.3/x86_64/clamav-0.103.1-lp153.234.4.x86_64.rpm.mirrorlist
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/security/openSUSE_Leap_15.3/x86_64/clamav-devel-0.103.1-lp153.234.4.x86_64.rpm.mirrorlist

Use the update variant for openSUSE, add it to your installation as another repository using YaST or zypper and give it a higher priority (lower number) than the repository that delivers the official updates.

Tip: RPMs of new ClamAV versions for existing SUSE products are provided through the respective online update channels. As these packages have to go through QA, it usually takes some time for a new ClamAV source release to appear as an official RPM. For those who want the newest version, packages are available from the security project in the openSUSE Build Service.

Zypper

Install ClamAV with zypper:

  zypper install -y clamav

Note: openSUSE packages are maintained by Reinhard Max.

EPEL: Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS

EPEL creates ClamAV packages for Fedora (as well as EPEL-enabled CentOS and RHEL). For more information on EPEL, visit their wiki.

To enable EPEL for CentOS:

dnf install -y epel-release

EPEL offers a selection of packages to install ClamAV:

clamd - The Clam AntiVirus Daemon
clamav - End-user tools for the Clam Antivirus scanner
clamav-data - Virus signature data for the Clam Antivirus scanner
clamav-devel - Header files and libraries for the Clam Antivirus scanner
clamav-lib - Dynamic libraries for the Clam Antivirus scanner
clamav-milter - Milter module for the Clam Antivirus scanner
clamav-update - Auto-updater for the Clam Antivirus scanner data-files

Most users will only need to run:

dnf install -y clamav clamd clamav-update

Tips

CentOS: On Community Enterprise Operating System (CentOS) the ClamAV package requires the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository.

RHEL: On RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) the EPEL release package has to be installed either manually or through RHN.

Fedora: Fedora packages can be found at https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/clamav

Fedora's packaging is more customized than most. Please review the RPM notes when troubleshooting your Fedora package configuration.

Gentoo

ClamAV is available in portage under /usr/portage/app-antivirus/clamav

To install, run:

emerge clamav

For more details, see the package entry on Portage.

FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD

Although all these systems offer the possibility to use ports or pkgsrc, you can install the pre-built package:

FreeBSD

FreeBSD offers two ClamAV ports (packages):

clamav
clamav-lts

To install, run:

pkg install clamav

and

pkg install clamav-lts

respectively.

Note: For more details, see:

https://www.freshports.org/security/clamav

https://www.freshports.org/security/clamav-lts

OpenBSD

To install, run:

  pkg_add clamav

NetBSD

To install, run:

  pkgin install clamav

Solaris

OpenCSW is a community software project for Solaris 8+ on both Sparc and x86. It packages more than 2000 popular open source titles and they can all easily be installed with dependency handling via pkgutil which is modeled after Debian's apt-get.

pkgutil -i clamav

Note: The package can be found on OpenCSW though it is unfortuantely quite out-of-date.

Disclaimer: ClamAV is also no longer supported on Solaris because Solaris is proprietary, less commonly used, and difficult to work with. Future versions of ClamAV will depend on components written in the Rust programming language, which also does not support building directly on Solaris. It is likely that ClamAV will no longer work on Solaris in the future.

Slackware

You can download ClamAV builds for Slackware from https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/system/clamav/

Download the package, and as root, install it like so (substituting the appropriate filename):

  installpkg clamav.tar.gz

macOS

ClamAV can be easily installed on macOS using one of these popular package managers:

Homebrew

Install Homebrew if you don't already have it. Then run:

  brew install clamav

Homebrew installs versioned packages to /usr/local/Cellar/<pacakge>/<version> with symlinks in /usr/local/opt/<pacakge> to the current version. Symlinks for ClamAV's executables will be placed in /usr/local/bin to add them to your PATH. ClamAV's config files will be placed in /usr/local/etc/clamav.

As with most other installation methods, you may need to do the following at a minimum before you can run freshclam, clamscan, or use clamdscan with clamd:

Create /usr/local/etc/clamav/freshclam.conf from /usr/local/etc/clamav/freshclam.conf.sample.
Remove or comment-out the Example line from freshclam.conf
Run freshclam to download the latest malware definitions.

If you wish to run clamd you'll also need to create /usr/local/etc/clamav/clamd.conf from /usr/local/etc/clamav/clamd.conf.sample, and configure clamd.conf with Local/Unix socket settings (preferred), or TCP socket settings.

MacPorts

Install MacPorts if you don't already have it. Then run:

  sudo port install clamav

MacPorts installs versioned packages to /opt/local/. ClamAV's config files will be placed in /opt/local/etc.

As with most other installation methods, you may need to do the following at a minimum before you can run freshclam, clamscan, or use clamdscan with clamd:

Create /opt/local/etc/freshclam.conf from /opt/local/etc/freshclam.conf.sample.
Remove or comment-out the Example line from freshclam.conf
Run freshclam to download the latest malware definitions.

If you wish to run clamd you'll also need to create /opt/local/etc/clamd.conf from /opt/local/etc/clamd.conf.sample, and configure clamd.conf with Local/Unix socket settings (preferred), or TCP socket settings.

ClamAV Documentation