In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ClamAV on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, ClamAV is an open-source (GPL) antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware, adware, rootkits, and other malicious threats on Linux. It’s easy to use and best for Linux-based Web and Mail servers.
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 antivirus on CentOS 8.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 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 CentOS 8
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo dnf install epel-release sudo dnf update
Step 2. Installing ClamAV on CentOS 8.
Run the following commands to install ClamAV:
sudo dnf install clamav clamav-update clamd
Step 3. Configure ClamAV with SELinux.
Once Clamav has been installed SELinux must be adjusted, otherwise, the freshclam utility for updates will not work and scans will not be performed because they’ll be blocked:
setsebool -P antivirus_can_scan_system 1
Step 4. Update the ClamAV Signature Database.
Update virus database with freshclam:
sudo freshclam
It’ll take a few minutes to complete. When it’s done, restart the service:
sudo systemctl restart freshclam.service
We can now make use of the Clamav antivirus and make some scans at will. This is a very short guide from its developers. But here are some simple examples:
clamscan --infected --remove --recursive /home
Print help information using -h or –help option:
clamscan -h
Congratulations! You have successfully installed ClamAV. Thanks for using this tutorial to install the ClamAV antivirus on CentOS 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official ClamAV website.
