In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ClamAV on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, ClamAV is an open-source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware, adware, rootkits, and other malicious threats. ClamAV offers a Command-line scanner, a Milter interface for Sendmail, an Advanced database updater, and built-in support for archive formats, ELF executables + Portable Executable files, and popular document formats.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of ClamAV on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: AlmaLinux 8.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install ClamAV on AlmaLinux 8
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo dnf update sudo dnf install epel-release
Step 2. Installing ClamAV on AlmaLinux 8.
Now we run these commands to install ClamAV to your system:
sudo dnf install clamav clamd clamav-update
After that, add ClamAV user on AlmaLinux:
sudo groupadd clamav sudo useradd -g clamav -s /bin/false -c "Clam Antivirus" clamav
Step 3. Configure SELinux for ClamAV.
Run the below command to configure it for ClamAV:
sudo setsebool -P antivirus_can_scan_system 1
Step 4. Update ClamAV Signature Database.
ClamAV uses FreshClam, to periodically check for new database releases and keeps your database up to date. Since you have installed ClamAV for the first time, you may run the commands below to manually update the ClamAV signature database.
First, stop the freshclam service:
systemctl stop clamav-freshclam
Then, run freshclam:
freshclam
Once done, start freshclam service again:
systemctl start clamav-freshclam
Step 5. Initiate Scan with ClamAV.
If you want to scan some folder, file, or home directory, here is the syntax to follow on your command terminal:
sudo clamscan filename
To scan the directory:
sudo clamscan -r directoryname
Print help information using -h or --help option:
clamscan -h
Congratulations! You have successfully installed ClamAV. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing ClamAV on your AlmaLinux 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official ClamAV website.
