Making Exim and ClamAV play nicely

It’s fairly easy to get Exim and ClamAV to work together, but there are are couple of gotchas. I’m assuming that you’re using Debian (I used Debian Etch). First, install ClamAV:

apt-get install clamav clamav-daemon

Then uncomment and edit the av_scanner variable in your Exim configuration to look like the following:

av_scanner = clamd:/var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl

Next find the Exim acl_check_data ACL. There should be a configuration section that outputs a warning if the message contains malware. Uncomment the malware configuration and change warn to deny if you want to reject messages containing viruses. It should look like this when you’re finished:

deny
malware = *
message = This message was detected as possible malware ($malware_name).

Now, add ClamAV to the Debian-exim group so that Exim and ClamAV can work together.

usermod -G Debian-exim clamav

Finally, restart Exim:

/etc/init.d/exim4 restart

That’s it!