How to Install ClamAV and Configure Daily Scanning on CentOS

A. Install ClamAV

1. Install EPEL repo

Before we can do proceed, you must ensure that you have the EPEL yum repository enabled.

2. Install required packages

yum install clamav clamd

3. Start the clamd service and set it to auto-start

/etc/init.d/clamd on
chkconfig clamd on
/etc/init.d/clamd start

4. Update ClamAV’s signatures

/usr/bin/freshclam

Note: ClamAV will update automatically, as part of /etc/cron.daily/freshclam.

B. Configure Daily Scan

In this example, we will configure a cronjob to scan the /home/ directory every day:

1. Create cron file:

vim /etc/cron.daily/manual_clamscan

Add the following to the file above. Be sure to change SCAN_DIR to the directory that you want to scan:

#!/bin/bash
SCAN_DIR="/home"
LOG_FILE="/var/log/clamav/manual_clamscan.log"

/usr/bin/clamscan -i -r $SCAN_DIR >> $LOG_FILE

Give our cron script executable permissions:

chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/manual_clamscan

You can even run the above script to ensure that it works correctly.