Configuring ClamAV Scanner

Overview

Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) is an antivirus software toolkit that is standard on new cPanel & WHM installations. The scanner searches your server for malicious programs. If it identifies a potential security threat, it will flag the file to allow you to take the appropriate action.

Important: After you configure ClamAV Scanner, we recommend that you create a root cron job that will run daily during off-peak hours.

 

How to install _ClamAV Scanner

To install or uninstall ClamAV Scanner, use the Manage Plugins interface in WHM (Home >> cPanel >> Manage Plugins).

 

ClamAV Scanner configuration

To configure ClamAV Scanner:

  1. Select the services that you wish to scan.
    • Scan Entire Home Directory — Scans the home directory on your server.
    • Scan Mail — Scans all mail folders on your server.
    • Scan Public FTP Space — Scans all folders that are publicly accessible through FTP services.
    • Scan Public Web Space — Scans all folders that are publicly accessible through the web.
  2. Click Save.

 Important: You must perform additional steps if you wish to integrate ClamAV Scanner with Exim.

Configure ClamAV Scanner for specific users

If you wish to override the ClamAV Scanner configuration for specific users, click User Configuration. The User Configuration interface also allows you to set override defaults for all new "configured users."

 

Add or remove configured users

Before you can configure a user's ClamAV Scanner settings, that user must appear on the Configured Users menu.

To add a user to the Configured Users menu:

  1. Select the desired user from the User List menu.
  2. Click Add.
    • If you wish to add all of the users that are on the User List menu to the Configured Users menu, click Add All.

To remove a user from the Configured Users menu:

  1. Select the desired user from the Configured Users menu.
  2. Click Remove.
    • If you wish to remove all of the users that are on the Configured Users menu, click Remove All.

Note: After you remove a user from the Configured Users menu, ClamAV Scanner will use the main configuration to scan that user's portion of the server.

 

Configure defaults for new configured users

ClamAV Scanner applies the settings that you specify under the Defaults header to all new configured users.

To set the default settings for new configured users:

  1. Select the services that you wish to scan.
    • Scan Entire Home Directory — Scans the user's home directory.
    • Scan Mail — Scans the user's mail folders.
    • Scan Public FTP Space — Scans all of the user's folders that are publicly accessible through FTP services.
    • Scan Public Web Space — Scans all of the user's folders that are publicly accessible through the web.
  2. Click Save.

 

Configure settings for an individual user

To configure ClamAV Scanner for an individual user:

  1. In the Group Scanner Configuration section's Configured Users menu, select the user for whom you wish to configure ClamAV Scanner.
    • If the desired user does not appear in the Configured Users menu, use the instructions above to add that user.
    • The user that you select will appear in the Configure User textbox in the User Scanner Configuration section.
  2. In the User Scanner Configuration section, click Configure.
  3. Select the services that you wish to scan.
    • Scan Entire Home Directory — Scans the user's home directory.
    • Scan Mail — Scans the user's mail folders.
    • Scan Public FTP Space — Scans all of the user's folders that are publicly accessible through FTP services.
    • Scan Public Web Space — Scans all of the user's folders that are publicly accessible through the web.
  4. Click Save Defaults.

Configure ClamAV Scanner for Exim

Important: You must perform these additional steps if you wish to integrate ClamAV Scanner with Exim.

To configure ClamAV Scanner for Exim:

  1. Navigate to the Exim Configuration Manager interface (Home >> Service Configuration >> Exim Configuration Manager >> Basic Editor >> Security).
  2. For the Scan messages for malware from authenticated senders (exiscan) option, select the On setting.
  3. For the Scan outgoing messages for malware option, select the On setting.
  4. Click Save.

 

Command line interface

If you prefer to use the command line interface to run ClamAV, the binaries are located in the /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/ directory:

 

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/clamscan
/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/freshclam

Note: If you have scripts that expect ClamAV binaries in the /usr/local/bin directory, you can create symbolic links with the following:

 

ln -s /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/clamscan /usr/local/bin/clamscan
ln -s /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/freshclam /usr/local/bin/freshclam

 

ClamAV Scanner cron job

After you configure ClamAV Scanner, we recommend that you create a root cronjob that will run daily during off-peak hours. The cronjob should run the following command:

 

for i in `awk '!/nobody/{print $2 | "sort | uniq" }' /etc/userdomains | sort | uniq`; do /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/clamscan -i -r /home/$i 2>>/dev/null; done >> /root/infections&

This command recursively searches the home directory for spam and infected files.

  • malware, whm, clamav, scan, security, server hardening
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