I just updated the three Clamav components using YUM and there were no errors or problems.

However, when I rebooted the system there was a message stating that the anti virus definitions were older then 7 days and that I should update the anti virus definitions.

I tried to use Freshclam to do this and got the following messages:

[root@centos5 ~]# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Thu Oct 1 09:12:25 2009
main.cvd is up to date (version: 51, sigs: 545035, f-level: 42, builder: sven)
ERROR: chdir_tmp: Can't create directory ./clamav-53a663906264d1cc34065aed10e96dc1
WARNING: Incremental update failed, trying to download daily.cvd
ERROR: getfile: Can't create new file /var/clamav/clamav-22684762b31aca0b03442e96d5dc5dad in /var/clamav
Hint: The database directory must be writable for UID 102 or GID 103
WARNING: Can't download daily.cvd from db.us.clamav.net
[root@centos5 ~]#

The 102/103 (user/group) are for user 'amavis'.

Below are the permissions for the /var/clamav:

[root@centos5 ~]# cd /var/clamav
[root@centos5 clamav]# ls -la |more
total 89988
drwxr-xr-x 5 clamav clamav 4096 Oct 1 08:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 32 root root 4096 Apr 3 22:49 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 amavis amavis 4096 May 3 15:32 clamav-2eb44880df1071d11bd3478b3459f078
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 1922048 Jun 20 17:54 daily.cld
-rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 733428 Jun 17 19:09 daily.cvd
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 895232 Mar 24 2009 daily.cvd.rpmnew
drwxr-xr-x 2 amavis amavis 4096 Sep 30 22:41 daily.inc
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 47079936 Jun 20 11:01 main.cld
-rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 21253696 Jun 17 19:09 main.cvd
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 20091559 Mar 24 2009 main.cvd.rpmnew
drwxr-xr-x 2 amavis amavis 4096 Apr 1 2009 main.inc
-rw------- 1 amavis amavis 676 Oct 1 09:12 mirrors.dat
[root@centos5 clamav]#


root@centos5 daily.inc]# ls -la |more
total 2392
drwxr-xr-x 2 amavis amavis 4096 Sep 30 22:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 clamav clamav 4096 Oct 1 08:53 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 17992 Mar 31 2009 COPYING
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 214 Mar 31 2009 daily.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 31291 Mar 31 2009 daily.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 6752 Apr 1 2009 daily.fp
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 6050 Mar 31 2009 daily.ftm
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 35388 Mar 31 2009 daily.hdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 1098 Mar 31 2009 daily.hdu
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 1196 Mar 31 2009 daily.ign
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 711 Apr 1 2009 daily.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 320 Mar 31 2009 daily.ldb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 2055412 Apr 1 2009 daily.mdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 28749 Mar 31 2009 daily.mdu
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 190956 Apr 1 2009 daily.ndb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 5909 Mar 31 2009 daily.ndu
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 3817 Mar 31 2009 daily.pdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 2975 Mar 31 2009 daily.wdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 3448 Apr 1 2009 daily.zmd
[root@centos5 daily.inc]#


[root@centos5 main.inc]# ls -la |more
total 43440
drwxr-xr-x 2 amavis amavis 4096 Apr 1 2009 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 clamav clamav 4096 Oct 1 08:53 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 17992 Apr 23 2008 COPYING
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 4725917 Mar 29 2009 main.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 6141 Mar 29 2009 main.fp
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 716040 Mar 29 2009 main.hdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 318 Mar 29 2009 main.info
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 23388761 Mar 29 2009 main.mdb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 15529131 Mar 29 2009 main.ndb
-rw-r--r-- 1 amavis amavis 217 Apr 23 2008 main.zmd
[root@centos5 main.inc]#


I'm running Centos 5.3 and I'm a newbie.

If anyone can help me resolve this issue it would be greatly appreciated.

Do I have to use the 'chmod command' and if so where would I point it to in order to make the changes.

I possible, please provide a specific example. I don't want to wreck my system.

Thanks all.

just do the following, as root, then see how you go:
This will give complete read/write/execute capabilities to clamav and amavis on this directory. You may need to tweak to suit your situation.

Hi,

Might be easiest to change group write permissions and add 'amavis' as a secondary group for clamav

cheers

<edit>whoops.. a bit slow </edit>

If you can give us some feedback on whether this succeeded for you or not, that would be great, basically for other users down the line....

I used yum to update Clamav. (yum update clamav)

This ran to completion without any problems.

However I had to do a separate yum update on 'clamav-db.i386' which ran to completion without any problems.

I then tried to use 'freshclam' to bring the virus database up to the most current level and this didn't work because of the problem stated in my list question.

I did issued the following commands as suggested:

cd /var
chown -R clamav:amavis clamav/
chmod -R 770 clamav/
freshclam

However running freshclam didn't work because of the problem with directory permissions:

Being I had a good back up of my system I figured I'd mess around a little so I just did a:

cd /var/clamv
chmod -R 775 clamav

ran freshclam again and it worked.

I have no idea why /user/group/everyone/...the everyone part needed read/write/execute but it did.

Now I'll change the everyone part back to read/execute.

Go figure???