ClamAV will not start after updating to version 0.90

This applies to:

• OES (Linux)

Summary

In the process of applying routine updates to the OES SP2 system (using zlm) ClamAV 0.87 was unexpectedly updated to 0.90 (there are quite a few security fixes included so on the face of it this is a good thing)

..However..

The new version won't load as it complains about config file options being specified incorrectly.

Symptoms

The problem manifests itself as the following messages from rug (zlm) during the patch process:

Transaction failed: Unable to complete RPM transaction: /etc/clamav.conf
saved as /etc/clamav.conf.rpmsave

After patching, ClamAV fails to start with the following error:

Starting Clam AntiVirus daemon ERROR: Parse error at line 30: Option LogTime requires boolean argument.
ERROR: Can't open/parse the config file /etc/clamd.conf
startproc: exit status of parent of /usr/sbin/clamd: 1

Cause

The new version has slightly different config file requirements. Essentially the major change is that if an option is specified it MUST have an argument specified..

i.e previously this would have been ok:

# This option specifies the log events - default is true
LogEvents

but now you must have:

# This option specifies the log events - default is true
LogEvents true

Solution

There is a conversion script included with 0.90 (see README for details)

The user is encouraged to review the updated syntax after using the conversion tool.

Workaround

Only workaround is to edit the /etc/clamd.conf by hand, e.g as follows:

Line 30: LogTime true
Line 39: LogSyslog true
Line 72: FixStaleSocket true
Line 152: Foreground true
Line 284: ClamukoScanOnAccess true
Line 288: ClamukoScanOnOpen true

Or as appropriate.

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Document ID: SKB0476
Published on: 08 Mar 2007