Howto Fedora 18 clamav and claws-mail

The following steps will guide you through the setup to enable the claws-mails clamd plugin to scan your e-mails for virus etc. on a Fedora 18 setup. The prequisit is that you have claws-mail installed an configured for your email and that you can run commands as root via the sudo command.

Step 1: Install the necessary rpm packages

sudo yum install clamav-scanner clamav-update claws-mail-plugins-clamd

Step 2: Configure clamav

Edit /etc/freshclam.conf and remove or comment out the following line and adjust the values according to your needs.

# Comment or remove the line below.
Example

Run sudo freshclam to get an initial virus database.

Edit /etc/clamd.d/scan.conf and remove or comment out the following line and again adjust the values according to your needs. The values for TCPSocket and TCPAddr need to be enabled.

# Comment or remove the line below.
Example

Step 3: Enabled clamav and regular virus database updates via freshclam

Start the clamav scanner deamon with sudo systemctl start clamd@scan.service. Check if the service is running via sudo systemctl status clamd@scan.service. To permanently enabled the clamav scanner deamon at startup run sudo systemctl enable clamd@scan.service.

If you want automatic updates via freshclam edit /etc/sysconfig/freshclam and remove the last four lines. This will try to update the virus database via cron every three hours.

Step 4: Configure claws-mail to utilize the clamd plugin

Now start up claws mail and load the clamd plugin via Configuration -> Plugins -> Load… -> clamd.so Next go to Configuration -> Plugins -> Clam AntiVirus and fill in the values as needed. If automatic configuration does not work disable the checkbox and enter the values you specified in scan.conf for TCPSocket and TCPAddr.

Now you can grep a test signature (like Eicar) and see how the clamd plugins reports (and acts) on the signature.