Installation on macOS (Mac OS X)
Below are the steps for installing ClamAV from source on Apple macOS.
Install prerequisites
The easiest way to install prerequisites on macOS is to use Homebrew
-
Install Homebrew
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
-
Install ClamAV dependencies
- Install XCode's Command Line Tools
xcode-select --install
- Install library dependencies
brew install openssl zlib pcre2 json-c
- Install XCode's Command Line Tools
-
Install the unit testing dependencies
brew install check check-devel
Note: LLVM is also an optional dependency. LLVM will not provide any additional features, but is an alternative method for executing bytecode signatures versus using the built-in bytecode interpreter. Limited performance testing between LLVM and the bytecode interpreter did not yield conclusive evidence that one is "better" than the other. For the sake of simplicity, it is not recommended to install LLVM.
Download the latest stable release
- Open a browser and navigate to the ClamAV downloads page
- Click
clamav-<version>.tar.gz
link to download the latest stable release.
Extract the source archive
cd ~/Downloads
tar xzf clamav-<version>.tar.gz
cd clamav-<version>
Configure the build
Homebrew installs libraries and applications under /usr/local/Cellar/<package>/<version>/
.
To configure the ClamAV build using our homebrew-installed dependencies, you may need to reference some of them explicitly. Others may be detected automatically.
Typical ./configure
usage
Note: Your Homebrew-installed package version directories may differ slightly.
./configure --with-openssl=/usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.2l --with-zlib=/usr/local/Cellar/zlib/1.2.11/ --with-libjson=yes --enable-check
Once ./configure
completes, it will print a summary. Verify that the packages you installed are in fact being detected.
Example configure summary output:
configure: Summary of detected features follows
OS : darwin17.2.0
pthreads : yes ()
configure: Summary of miscellaneous features
check : -L/usr/local/lib -lcheck -R/usr/local/lib (auto)
fanotify : no (disabled)
fdpassing : 1
IPv6 : yes
configure: Summary of optional tools
clamdtop : -lncurses (auto)
milter : yes (disabled)
clamsubmit : yes (libjson-c-dev found at /usr/local), libcurl-devel found at /usr)
configure: Summary of engine performance features
release mode: yes
llvm : no (disabled)
mempool : yes
configure: Summary of engine detection features
bzip2 : ok
zlib : /usr
unrar : yes
preclass : yes (libjson-c-dev found at /usr/local)
pcre : /usr/local/Cellar/pcre2/10.32
libmspack : yes (Internal)
libxml2 : yes, from /usr
yara : yes
fts : yes (libc)
If you experience an error wherein configure
output claims that gcc
is unable to build an executable -- please see the Troubleshooting section at the bottom.
Additional popular ./configure
options
--sysconfdir
- Install the configuration files to/etc
instead of/usr/local/etc
:./configure --sysconfdir=/etc
--prefix
- Install ClamAV to a directory other than/usr/local/
:- Example 1: Install to a local
./install
directory../configure --prefix=`pwd`/install
- Example 2: Install ClamAV locally on an unprivileged shell account.
./configure --prefix=$HOME/clamav --disable-clamav
- Example 1: Install to a local
--disable-clamav
- Don't drop super-user priveleges to runfreshclam
orclamd
as theclamav
* user../configure --disable-clamav
Tip: Using this
--disable-clamav
means thatfreshclam
andclamd
will run with root privleges if invoked usingsudo
. Runningclamd
orclamscan
as root is not recommended. Instead of using this option, you can configurefreshclam
orclamd
to drop to any other user by:- setting the
DatabaseOwner
option infreshclam.conf
and - setting the
User
option inclamd.conf
.
- setting the
Please see the ./configure --help
for additional options.
Compile ClamAV
Compile ClamAV with:
make -j2
If you experience error messages wherein the compiler is unable to find the correct openssl header or library files, you may need to reconfigure and provide explicit header and library paths. See the Troubleshooting section below for details.
Run ClamAV Unit Tests (Optional)
For peace of mind, it can be helpful to run a small suite of unit and system tests.
Run:
make check
All tests should pass.* Output will look something like this:
...
PASS: check_clamav
PASS: check_freshclam.sh
PASS: check_sigtool.sh
PASS: check_unit_vg.sh
PASS: check1_clamscan.sh
PASS: check2_clamd.sh
PASS: check3_clamd.sh
PASS: check4_clamd.sh
PASS: check5_clamd_vg.sh
PASS: check6_clamd_vg.sh
SKIP: check7_clamd_hg.sh
PASS: check8_clamd_hg.sh
PASS: check9_clamscan_vg.sh
...
============================================================================
Testsuite summary for ClamAV 0.100.2
============================================================================
# TOTAL: 13
# PASS: 12
# SKIP: 1
# XFAIL: 0
# FAIL: 0
# XPASS: 0
# ERROR: 0
Notes:
- The
check7_clamd.hg.sh
(helgrind) is presently disabled and will be skipped.
- For details, see: the Git commit
If you have a failure or an error in the unit tests, it could be that you are missing one or more of the prerequisites or that there is miss-match in the header files after upgrading to a newer version of macOS. If the latter, please see the Troubleshooting section at the bottom.
If you are investigating a failure, please do the following:
cd unit_tests
Use less
to read the log for the failed test.
Example:
less check4_clamd.sh.log`
To submit a bug report regarding unit text failures, please follow these bug reporting steps.
Install ClamAV
Install ClamAV with:
make install
Tip: If installing to the default or other system-owned directory, you may need to use
sudo
.
First time set-up
Note: The following instructions assume you used the default install paths (i.e.
/usr/local
). If you modified the install locations using--prefix
or--sysconfdir
options, replace/usr/local
with your chosen install path.
freshclam
config
Before you can use freshclam
to download updates, you need to create a freshclam
config. A sample config is provided for you.
-
Copy the sample config. You may need to use
sudo
:cp /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf.sample /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf
-
Modify the config file using your favorite text editor. Again, you may need to use
sudo
.- At a minimum, remove the
Example
line sofreshclam
can use the config.
Take the time to look through the options. You can enable the sample options by deleting the
#
comment characters.Some popular options to enable include:
LogTime
LogRotate
NotifyClamd
DatabaseOwner
- At a minimum, remove the
-
Create the database directory.
mkdir /usr/local/share/clamav
Tip You may need to use
sudo
.
clamd
config (optional)
You can run clamscan
without setting the config options for clamd
. However, the clamd
scanning daemon allows you to use clamdscan
to perform faster a-la-carte scans, allows you to run multi-threaded scans, and allows you to use clamav-milter
if you want to use ClamAV as a mail filter if you host an email server.
-
Copy the sample config. You may need to use
sudo
:cp /usr/local/etc/clamd.conf.sample /usr/local/etc/clamd.conf
-
Modify the config file using your favorite text editor. Again, you may need to use
sudo
.- At a minimum, remove the
Example
line sofreshclam
can use the config. - You also need to select a Socket option for
clamd
soclamdscan
and other utilities can communicate withclamd
. You must enable one of the following.LocalSocket
TCPSocket
Take the time to look through the options. You can enable the sample options by deleting the
#
comment characters.Some popular options to enable include:
LogTime
LogClean
LogRotate
User
- At a minimum, remove the
Download / Update the signature database
Before you can run a scan, you'll need to download the signature databases. Once again, you may need to run with sudo
/root privileges.
If you installed to a location in your system PATH:
freshclam
If you installed to another location:
/<path>/<to>/<clamav>/bin/freshclam
Users and on user privileges
If you are running freshclam
and clamd
as root or with sudo
, and you did not explicitely configure with --disable-clamav
, you will want to ensure that the DatabaseOwner
user specified in freshclam.conf
owns the database directory so it can download signature updates.
The user that clamd
, clamdscan
, and clamscan
run as may be the same user, but if it isn't -- it merely needs read access to the database directory.
If you choose to use the default clamav
user to run freshclam
and clamd
, you'll need to create the clamav group and the clamav user account the first time you install ClamAV.
Prep by identifying an unused group id (gid), and an unused user UniqueID.
This command will display all current group PrimaryGroupIDs:
dscl . list /Groups PrimaryGroupID | tr -s ' ' | sort -n -t ' ' -k2,2
This command will display all current user UniqueIDs:
dscl . list /Users UniqueID | tr -s ' ' | sort -n -t ' ' -k2,2
Then, these commands can be used to create the clamav
group and clamav
user.
sudo dscl . create /Groups/clamav
sudo dscl . create /Groups/clamav RealName "Clam Antivirus Group"
sudo dscl . create /Groups/clamav gid 799 # Ensure this is unique!
sudo dscl . create /Users/clamav
sudo dscl . create /Users/clamav RealName "Clam Antivirus User"
sudo dscl . create /Users/clamav UserShell /bin/false
sudo dscl . create /Users/clamav UniqueID 599 # Ensure this is unique!
sudo dscl . create /Users/clamav PrimaryGroupID 799 # Must match the above gid!
Finally, you will want to set user ownership of the database directory. For example:
sudo chown -R clamav:clamav /usr/local/share/clamav
Usage
You should be all set up to run scans.
Take a look at our usage documentation to learn about how to use ClamAV each of the utilities.
Troubleshooting
Configure -- gcc
failed to build executable
It is possible that gcc
/clang
is misconfigured. This is particularly likely after an upgrade to a newer versions of macOS (e.g after an upgrade from macOS High Sierra to macOS Mojave).
Open Terminal, and run the following:
xcode-select --install
This will download and install xcode developer tools and fix the problem. You will be prompted (in the macOS GUI) to accept the license agreement before it will continue. As a follow on step, you may need to reset the path to Xcode if you have several versions or want the command line tools to run without Xcode.
xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app
xcode-select --switch /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
Credit: Solution shamelessly lifted from apple stackexchange
Make -- failed to find correct openssl header or library files
Homebrew provides symlinks in /usr/local/opt
to aid in the linking process:
ls -l /usr/local/opt/openssl*
lrwxr-xr-x 1 gary admin 24B Aug 21 12:39 /usr/local/opt/openssl@ -> ../Cellar/openssl/1.0.2p
lrwxr-xr-x 1 gary admin 24B Aug 21 12:39 /usr/local/opt/openssl@1.0@ -> ../Cellar/openssl/1.0.2p
lrwxr-xr-x 1 gary admin 28B Nov 20 2017 /usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1@ -> ../Cellar/openssl@1.1/1.1.0g
If they aren't automatically detected you may experience issues linking openssl. You can work around this by explicitly listing the include -I
and library -L
paths.
For example:
./configure --with-openssl=/usr/local/Cellar/openssl/1.0.2l --with-libjson=yes --enable-check CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.0/include" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.0/lib/"
Make check -- unit tests failed for seemingly no reason
Similar to the above issue, it is possible for a mismatch in your development header files resulting in a working build that may fail the check
test suite.
If you're seeing one or more failed tests on a stable release of ClamAV on macOS, the following may resolve the issue:
Open Terminal, and run the following:
sudo installer -pkg /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/Packages/macOS_SDK_headers_for_macOS_10.14.pkg -target /
Credit: Solution shamelessly lifted from the pyenv github issue tracker