In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ClamAV on your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, ClamAV is an open-source (GPL) antivirus engine designed for detecting viruses, malware, 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 the step-by-step installation of ClamAV on a Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- 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 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing ClamAV on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
ClamAV antivirus is available in the Ubuntu repositories, you can install using the following command:
sudo apt install clamav
Update virus database with Freshclam:
sudo freshclam
It’ll take a few minutes to complete. When it’s done, restart the service:
sudo systemctl start clamav-freshclam
Try to scan:
clamscan --infected --remove --recursive /home
Step 3. Installing ClamTK.
ClamTK package provides GUI window, This is useful for desktop users:
sudo apt install clamtk
Congratulations! You have successfully installed ClamAV. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing ClamAV open source antivirus engine in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official ClamAV website.
