Clamtk und keine Virus DB Aktualisierung

Clamtk updates the Gui and the engine alright, but the signatures update fails. It is listed under the Updates and for a fraction of a second I see the status field showing: Checking, but the update does not occur.

Running freshclam as an alternative yields the following comments:

freshclam
ERROR: Please edit the example config file /etc/freshclam.conf
ERROR: Can't open/parse the config file /etc/freshclam.conf

I am asked to edit the conf file, but there is no information how the conf file should read. i would appreciate some help.

It's a very old post - but this looks similar? http://www.nuonce.net/support/viewthread.php?tid=221 (I had the same problem - and it seems to have worked for me - though why a 6 year old bug should apparently reappear I couldn't say) (beware - linux newbie!)

Edit clamd.conf, and freshclam.conf, but no luck. Get messages

freshclam -v -l /var/log/clam-update.log
ERROR: Can't open /var/log/clam-update.log in append mode (check permissions!).
ERROR: Problem with internal logger (UpdateLogFile = /var/log/clam-update.log).

My files
freshclam

and
clamd

as I understand freshclam drop it's priviledges and run as user 'clamav' check the permissions on file /var/log/clam-update.log, you need to allow write permission for user 'clamav'.

  and there is my problem, i've not file called
  /var/log/clam-update.log
  crazy... ::)

that's because user clamav doesn't have permission to write (create new log file) in /var/log on my system /var/log is listed as:

  drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 Nov 20 16:03 /var/log/

as you can see only root can create new file in /var/log.

Try to su to root, and create an empty log file in /var/log:

echo > /var/log/clam-update.log
chown clamav:clamav /var/log/clam-update.log

then try again to run freshclam ;)

This is the trick, AS you solved my day, ahhh problem, thanks man ;D

Why clamav as root?

I use that as user: /usr/bin/freshclam –datadir=$HOME/.clamtk/db –log=$HOME/.clamtk/db/freshclam.log # clamtk-defs /usr/bin/clamscan –database=$HOME/.clamtk/db –detect-pua -i -r $HOME –exclude-dir=$HOME/.clamtk/viruses –log=$HOME/.clamtk/history/$(date +\%b-\%d-\%Y).log 2>/dev/null # clamtk-scan

I start not to understand what all of you here use as fix for the problem. I also met with this after I started freshclam as root in the console, and the clamtk gui does show a red button to say the list is not up to date.

I looked into the files /etc/freshclam.conf and /etc/clamd.conf, but don't understand too much what needs to be done there, except for the „Exemple“ to comment or remove.

What solutions could be suggested to make it easy to use for all ?

Thanks.

Although you can start freshclam as root user, the program will drop root privileges by itself.

The issue is that freshclam cannot create a new log file in /var/log, as non root user, because it lack of permission to write on /var/log. Once the log file as been created, there can be permission to 'append' on that log file. (that was my suggestion to Leiche).

Alternatively it's possible to define a different location for the log file, as suggested from margarita, using a location writable by freshclam (–log option). Of course the log destination could be changed directly on freshclam.conf / clamd.conf, i.e. to something like “~/tmp/freshclam.log“.

So now you have 3 solutions, but no one is an upstream solution :D