What dictates when freshclam updates?

[Dominic Raferd]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 at 13:39, Danny Horne <danny at trisect.uk> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been trying to figure out what dictates the interval at which
> freshclam updates the virus database.  It currently updates every three
> hours, but I rebooted my server at midnight last night, expecting
> updates to be done at 03:00, 06:00 etc., but they started at 05:00, then
> 08:00 etc.
>
> /etc/freshclam.conf is set to update every hour (for testing purposes),
> but this is ignored (guessing I need to set a cron job, but if that's
> the case why offer a time interval in the configuration file).
>
> Just trying to understand the update process.
>

I think it should be determined by freshclam.conf, which in my case is at
/etc/clamav (and is shown as such in my 'man freshclam'). On my system
(Ubuntu 18.04) freshclam is run by systemd (as clamav-freshclam), but it
knows not to run if /etc/cron.d/clamav-freshclam exists (which it doesn't
in my case), as presumably in this case freshclam is being run from cron.
My setting in freshclam.conf is to update every hour (Checks 24) and it
works like that.

You probably have to reload freshclam if you make changes to the
freshclam.conf file. So:
- are you sure you are editing the correct freshclam.conf file?
- did you reload freshclam after making changes to it?
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