In this article, we will have explained the necessary steps to install and set up ClamAV on Debian 10. Before continuing with this tutorial, make sure you are logged in as a user with sudo
privileges. All the commands in this tutorial should be run as a non-root user.
ClamAV is an open-source Antivirus tool available for Linux distributions. It integrates Mail servers to scan attachments received. Other functions also include web scanning. ClamAV includes a multi-threaded scanner daemon, command-line utilities for on-demand file scanning, and automatic signature updates. One of its main uses is on mail servers as a server-side email virus scanner.
Install ClamAV on Debian 10
Step 1. The first command will update the package lists to ensure you get the latest version and dependencies.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade sudo apt install software-properties-common build-essential curl
Step 2. Install ClamAV on Debian systems.
Run the following command sudo
in order to install the ClamAV daemon from the apt repositories:
sudo apt install clamav clamav-daemon
You can verify your ClamAV installation and also check the version number by running the following command:
clamscan --version
Step 3. Starting a scan with ClamAV.
The ClamAV utility provides you with many options on the basis of which you can scan files and folders on your system for viruses. You can get detail about these options by viewing the ClamAV help as follows:
clamscan --help
For example, I will be scanning the current user’s Home folder:
[email protected]:~# clamscan --infected --remove --recursive /home
----------- SCAN SUMMARY ----------- Known viruses: 61424 Engine version: 0.101.6 Scanned directories: 4 Scanned files: 6 Infected files: 0 Data scanned: 0.00 MB Data read: 0.00 MB (ratio 0.00:1) Time: 29.926 sec (0 m 46 s)
You can use the following command in order to scan your entire Debian system:
sudo clamscan --infected --remove --recursive /
That’s all you need to do to install the ClamAV on Debian 10 Buster. I hope you find this quick tip helpful. For further reading on ClamAV, please refer to their official knowledge base. If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.