Hi there,
On Thu, 1 Jul 2021, ChandranManikandan via clamav-users wrote:
I have updated the below packages through the webmin panel.
...
It would help us to know on what operating system this webmin panel is
operating, how you came to be using it, exactly how you installed it,
and when, and the same for ClamAV, and whether ClamAV has ever worked
for you, how you normally use it, whether you have updated it before,
whether you can scan a file using the ClamAV command-line tools i.e.
'clamscan' and 'clamdscan'... that sort of thing, to let us know how
the rest of ClamAV behaves on your system.
...
● clamav-freshclam.service - ClamAV virus database updater
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/clamav-freshclam.service; enabled;
vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead) since Thu 2021-07-01 13:28:11 +08; 1h 8min ago
Condition: start condition failed at Thu 2021-07-01 14:19:49 +08; 17min ago
ConditionPathExists=!/etc/cron.d/clamav-update was not met
Docs: man:freshclam(1)
man:freshclam.conf(5)
https://www.clamav.net/documents
...
See also
man systemd.unit
and look in there for 'ConditionPathExits', which is what the error
message you posted here is telling you is causing the problem.
There are several parts to a ClamAV installation. One of them is a
tool which keeps the ClamAV signature database up to date. That's
(usually) called 'freshclam', and there are several ways of using it.
The update may or may not have broken other parts of ClamAV too.
The fact that freshclam is not running only means that the databases
are not being kept up to date. It does not mean that you can't scan
the system, or scan your mail, or whatever else you do with ClamAV.
You might know, but we don't know yet because you haven't told us.
It isn't clear to me whether or not your system is trying to use
'cron' to run freshclam periodically, but the reference to 'cron.d'
makes me think it probably is. That's one of the ways of using it.
In that case its configuration is probably intended to run it for a
single update and then stop. The cron utility has the job of deciding
when next to start it. That means that cron needs to be configured as
well. It's pretty easy but there's documentation for you to read -
the man pages are accessed by typing at a shell prompt (usually that
will be in a terminal emulator like 'xterm', there are many of them)
the shell commands
man cron
and
man crontab
If you read the man page for freshclam (and that for freshclam.conf)
you'll see that freshclam is capable of updating the ClamAV database
periodically *without* the help of cron. This is another way of using
it; in this case you are running freshclam as a daemon. It's how it's
intended to be used, and that would normally be my preference.
If freshclam is not running you can start it yourself. After spending
some qualilty time with the freshclam.conf man page and looking at the
freshclam configuration file with a text editor you might want to make
changes to the freshclam configuration file which you think would be
appropriate for freshclam running as a daemon. There won't be many
changes to make, just things like how often freshclam checks to see if
an update is needed. Of course make a safe copy of the configuration
file before you do anything to it, and make notes about everything you
do, so if it all blows up you can tell us what you did. When you've
made any necessary changes, try running this command at a root shell
prompt:
freshclam -c /path/to/freshclam.conf
In that command of course you will need to replace
/path/to/freshclam.conf
with whatever is the full path to your freshclam configuration file.
If you do it this way all you have to do is configure freshclam, make
sure it starts at boot, and forget it. In that case you wouldn't want
the system to attempt to start the systemd and/or cron-driven service
as well, so you would disable that service. If you have a service for
the 'clamd' daemon as well, you would not want to disable that. Note
that when configured to use the published 'official' ClamAV databases,
the clamd daemon will use around a gigabyte of RAM while it's running.
The freshclam daemon uses very little resources most of the time, as
most of the time is isn't doing very much.
If you have managed to start freshclam manually and it is running as a
daemon then you'll want to stop it (and perhaps revert to the original
freshclam configuration) before trying to restart the systemd service.
When freshclam starts properly at the command line you'll normally see
no output except another shell prompt, but you can check that it is
running by using 'top' or whatever it is you usually use to view the
processes running. If freshclam starts OK from the command line then
you just need to find out why systemd is unhappy with things after the
update. The issue seems to be that the thing which runs the freshclam
utility (systemd is calling it a 'service') has not been started
properly.
I suspect that the update did not go perfectly and left things in a
mess, but if you rename
/etc/cron.d/clamav-update
to something different (for example /etc/cron.d/clamav-updated) and
then try to start the freshclam service it might tell us something.
HTH
--
73,
Ged.
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