You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

power8 Author

Level 1

10 points

ClamAV "Can't download daily.cvd from database.clamav.net" on macOS Server 5.6.3 / High Sierra

My macOS Server 5.6.3 default anti virus filter ClamAV are repeating,

ClamAV update process started at xxx xxx xx xx:xx:xx xxxx

main.cld is up to date (version: 59, sigs: 4564902, f-level: 60, builder: sigmgr)

WARNING: getpatch: Can't download daily-26096.cdiff from database.clamav.net

ERROR: getpatch: Can't download daily-26096.cdiff from database.clamav.net

WARNING: Incremental update failed, trying to download daily.cvd

ERROR: Can't download daily.cvd from database.clamav.net

Giving up on database.clamav.net...

Update failed. Your network may be down or none of the mirrors listed in /Library/Server/Mail/Config/clamav/freshclam.conf is working. Check http://www.clamav.net/doc/mirrors-faq.html for possible reasons.

Does anybody have any idea?

Mac mini, macOS 10.13

Posted on May 24, 2021 2:02 AM

Top-ranking reply

matthias zehnder

Level 1

18 points

Posted on May 26, 2021 4:23 AM

These messages started popping up for me several months ago - if you have server notifications switched on, you should also have received emails from your server that the virus tool does not work.

The reason is the version of the underlying software.

If you follow the link you posted and in the top section of the hyperlinks on said page go to the End Of Life Policy (https://www.clamav.net/documents/end-of-life-policy-eol), you will see the following sentence "Currently, every version from ClamAV 0.99 and down, including all patch versions, are unsupported, and are actively blocked from downloading new updates." If you run clamscan -V from Terminal, you will see that your local version is probably something like 0.93 or so.

I assume you stuck with this version of the server app to be able to continue using functionality which is removed in later versions of the server app. The downside here of course is that the underlying software will no longer get updated. It was only a matter of time until something like this would pop up...

The only way to get clamav back is to build it yourself on the server, update all the launch daemons and config files as well as amavisd conf of course to use the new version you built.

Alternatively, you can of course also take the final approach and switch off the virus check under the mail service in the server app...

View in context

ClamAV "Can't download daily.cvd from database.clamav.net" on macOS Server 5.6.3 / High Sierra

Similar questions