Clamav freshclam not updating the db files

Question

In my Linux system, I have installed clamav and clamav-daemon and updated the Checks parameter to 48 in the freshclam.conf (the db url points to a locally run private mirror)

The private mirror has the cvdupdate tool that is properly downloading the latest cvd files.

However, in the local machine, I have observed that neither the cvd files are updated nor the freshclam.log file is updated. But the downloads are successful if I run the freshclam command manually and the log file is also updated with the operations (all the operations are taking place with the clamav user itself).

May I know why is the auto update not happening? I was under the assumption that there need not be a separate cron job to run the freshclam command manually since we have the Checks parameters in the freshclam.conf file and the clamav/clamav-daemon takes care of updating the db files.

Answer 1

Looks like checks has a different purpose but not for scheduling automatic updates. I had to schedule a cron job that executes the db update command using freshclam to update the virus definitions.

Answer 2

Can you confirm the checks value you are putting in the freshclam.conf. freshclam db updates happens silently, if you want to get notified, you can use notify clamd parameter for getting the cvd files updates.