ClamXav Editor's Review

Clamav Mac Os; Virus detection is handled by Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) and others. Scanning occurs in real-time, cleaning e-mail traffic of Lotus Domino without slowing down the mail delivery. ClamXav for Mac gives you the tools to keep your computer clean. With an uncluttered interface and convenient functionality, this app is a good choice for most computer-savvy users.

ClamXav is a free antivirus solution based on the Open Source engine, ClamAV.

1. I'm running ClamXav Sentry as 'launch agent' with ClamAV antivirus scanning engine of my own custom build. I've tested for building ClamAV (from version 0.90.x to version 0.103.x) on Mac OS X 10.4.
2. ClamXAV keeps threats at bay and puts you firmly in charge of your Mac’s security. Scan a specific file or your entire hard drive.

Even though Mac OS X is considered a secure operating system from the viruses that actively attack the system point of view, the users shouldn't enjoy the 'status quo'. The thing is, there are certain situations when a Windows virus can attack a Mac OS installation or an unwanted program can do that too in certain situations.
The antivirus isn't running as a real-time on-access scanner, so you need to scan your files manually. You have on the application's interface a drop zone where you can drag-and-drop the folder or the file you want to scan. With this program you can scan e-mail files too in order to reduce the risk of infection.
A nice setting is the possibility to set a 'Folder Sentry' list. All the folders from this list is going to be watched by ClamXav. You can enable from the same panel the possibility to scan the inserted disks or the startup setting for this application.
The scheduler is well structured and basically it can do several main jobs. The first job is the scheduled scan. The second one is the schedule update. Both jobs are working seamlessly, depending on your predefined settings.
Usually the virus database is updated daily. This thing depends on the producer though but usually you can see every day a 'Downloading daily.cvd' action within this antivirus.
Pluses: It is a free application that can keep you safe from unwanted applications.
Drawbacks / flaws: it doesn't has a real-time on-access scanner so you have to be careful with every new and suspicious item.
In conclusion: if you don't like spending a lot of money for a fancy commercial antivirus and you would like though to have the security feeling, then try this tool.
version reviewed: 1.0.4

My preferred anti-virus system is ClamAV and I had trouble getting itrunning on macOS recently. Here’s how I got it going so if you’rerunning to the same issue, this should solve your problem.

I will go through the steps I took and problems encountered. Thisarticle will take you less than three minutes to read.

To get ClamAV running on macOS, run: brew install clamav

Thanks to brew, open source software like ClamAV can run on multipleplatforms.

Normally, I would just run the application directly, in this case:clamav, but that does not exist. The main application is: clamscan

Hmm. What is going on here?

After looking up the man page, man clamscan, one related package isfreshclam, that has a description:

freshclam - update virus databases

Aah - let’s run freshclam to update the definition!

Well, there’s no such file, or where do I get it? Is there a sample somewhere?

Well, it turns out I missed a critical line in the brew install, which was:

To finish installation & run clamav you will need to editthe example conf files at /usr/local/etc/clamav/

🤦‍♂️ whoops! I didn’t even look (and only when writing up this article,I noticed it).

Let’s make the freshclam.conf file by running command:

Change the following in the file from:

To:

Running the freshclam application again results in:

Great! Now macOS can scan virus too!

I can’t take credit for everything, I found this githubcommentthat basically describes the solution I presented.

I have this article as a way for me to remember but also remind myselfof apps that are better on Linux than macOS.

Getting ClamAV running on macOS isn’t that hard, but I was close togiving up!.

I love using open source software and macOS. As macOS is UNIX based,almost all open source software works on macOS.

Openssl For Mac

There are times where just using Linux to run open source software isa better experience than macOS. ClamAV is one of those times.

How Good Is Clamav

Hopefully, this post has helped you from giving up on open sourcesoftware!