Topic: freshclam not updating...and no error being logged

[Mjohnson]

I noticed 6 weeks ago or so that freshclam was not updating on my SME 7.  This is not a ClamAV outdated issue or a mirror synch issue.  It just does not update....ever.

Freshclam log shows nothing.  No errors, just the last log entry.  Manual upgrades are always successful, no issues.  The manual upgrade is reported in the Server-Manager panel just fine.

Any ideas?

[mmccarn]

freshclam looks like its running fine for me.  It also looks like it's configured as a service on SME 7.

I have:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/freshclam

and
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise/control
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise/ok
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise/pid
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise/stat
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise/lock
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise/status
    /var/service/freshclam/supervise
    /var/service/freshclam/run
    /var/service/freshclam/down
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise/control
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise/ok
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise/pid
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise/stat
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise/lock
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise/status
    /var/service/freshclam/log/supervise
    /var/service/freshclam/log/run
    /var/service/freshclam/log
    /var/service/freshclam

and

    /usr/bin/freshclam

the effective (not commented out) part of /var/service/freshclam/run is:

Code: [Select]

exec 2>&1
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/freshclam.conf
exec /usr/bin/freshclam --daemon --quiet

If I run "service freshclam status" I get:
/service/freshclam: run (pid 2769) 2524026 seconds, normally down

My system has all of the official SME updates installed, but my freshclam log tells me that my clamav is out of date - did you update your clamav somehow?

I hope something here turns out to be helpful!

[Mjohnson]

Thanks mmccarn for your reply.

freshclam was indeed running as a service, which I did confirm.  I am not sure exactly what is going on, but it just did not do it's hourly or bi-hourly update checking.  It is almost like a cron issue rather than an application or connection issue.

I did a manual freshclam yesterday and in checking the log I see that it automatically updated as it was supposed to do.  I do not know what I did differently.

Regarding your question about updated ClamAV, the developers have now uploaded ClamAV 88.6 to the SME-Testing respository.  Assuming you have that repository activated, then you can easily update your system.  I did it through yum as opposed to the Server-Mananger ( yum install clamav) .

I will monitor the freshclam update process for a few days and report back if the problem continues.

Again thanks for your reply....

MJ

[CharlieBrady]

freshclam was indeed running as a service, which I did confirm.  I am not sure exactly what is going on, but it just did not do it's hourly or bi-hourly update checking.  It is almost like a cron issue rather than an application or connection issue.

cron is not involved in freshclam updates in SME server.

[Mjohnson]

So how is the signature updates scheduled??  Or more to the point of this message thread, what would be the cause of freshclam not updating?

[CharlieBrady]

So how is the signature updates scheduled??

freshclam runs permanently, and makes its own decisions when an update is needed. It is configured to check 24 times per day (see /etc/freshclam.conf).

Or more to the point of this message thread, what would be the cause of freshclam not updating?

I have no idea, or information to form an opinion.  If you have any information about malfunctions, post to the bug tracker, please, not here.

[Mjohnson]

Thanks Charlie for the assist.  I will post as you suggest if I get anything more definite.

[mdo]

We have noticed the same on several SME (6 and 7) servers over the last few weeks. On SME6 where the ClamAV installation is a contrib, the freshclam updates are scheduled via cron. There it looked like a former freshclam job never finished and blocked any further freshclam jobs.
In that scenario, we had to kill the 'hanging' freshclam, ran a freshclam manually and after that, the regular (cron) jobs started working again.
Under SME7, we restarted the freshclam service (/etc/rc7.d/S80freshclam restart) to get things working again.
I believe that the problems come from the remote server end and not from the SMEserver installations.
Judging on the ClamAV 0.88.6 changelog ("freshclam: apply timeout patch "), I hope that this version will help (fix?) with that issue.
Michael