ClamAV

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Hello,

ClamAV is an open source anti-virus package that is most widely used as a free e-mail anti-virus scanner on mail servers. I have been using the package for around 5 years now and have very little trouble with it. It is generally very stable and effective at detecting viruses and allows me to delete those e-mails before they make it to my users inboxes. I use simscan to run the clamav virus checks as e-mail is accepted on my qmail based mail servers.

The installation and configuration of ClamAV is very straight forward. The configure line is simple and I set only the user that clamd will run as and the install directory prefix. The configuration files are well documented and easy to set up after the installation process is completed. The reason I gave the 7 is because long ago I was forced to run my mail servers on Solaris instead of Linux and from time to time I ran into troubles getting the make process to complete successfully. I have more problems on older servers than newer ones, but most of the old ones have been phased out. I file this problem under backwards compatibility, but to be fair the argument can also be made that it's not a ClamAV problem and that all of the servers should be running current operating systems.

I gave the high ratings for the documentation and support because as I mentioned above, the configuration files are clear and self documented. Any settings that I need to find are easy to locate and update. There is also a mailing list for ClamAV users who need some support, but I have not needed to use it.

I gave 10's for the features and quality because the software does everything that I need it to do, and it runs without crashing until it is time for me to upgrade to the latest version. The virus definition updates are made at least daily and can be automatically downloaded using the freshclam command from the clamav users crontab. I have mine set to check for and download updates once an hour.

The price can not be beat, it's free!

Overall ClamAV is a great product that I use on all of my incoming mail servers that need AV protection enabled.

The official web site for ClamAV can be found here.

-Raymond



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