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ClamAV on Alpine: Your Lightweight Container for Virus Scanning 🛡️

This Docker container offers a straightforward and efficient way to perform virus scans using ClamAV, built on the incredibly lightweight Alpine Linux. It's perfect for quickly scanning mounted directories or setting up a dedicated ClamAV server or client.

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Key Features ✨

  • Always Up-to-Date: Automatically updates the ClamAV database using freshclam before every scan, ensuring you have the latest threat definitions.
  • Flexible Modes: Choose between Scan Mode for direct directory scanning or Server Mode to enable network-based scanning for other clients. (Thanks, @MitchellThompkins!)
  • Lightweight & Fast: Built on Alpine Linux, this container is designed for minimal overhead and quick operations.
  • Customizable: Supports various clamscan arguments and volume mounts for advanced configurations.

Getting Started 🚀

Usage Modes

This container supports two primary modes of operation, controlled by the MODE environment variable.

📁 Local Scan Mode (Default)

This is the classic way to use ClamAV: scan a mounted directory directly. If no MODE is specified, scan is the default.

docker run --rm -e MODE=scan -v "$PWD/test_dir:/scan" tquinnelly/clamav-alpine

🌐 Server Mode

Run ClamAV as a daemon, allowing other clients to connect and request scans.

docker run --rm -e MODE=server -p 3310:3310 tquinnelly/clamav-alpine

Custom Port and Address:

docker run --rm -e MODE=server -e CLAMD_TCP_ADDR=10.17.2.1 -e CLAMD_TCP_PORT=3311 -p 3311:3311 tquinnelly/clamav-alpine

Client Usage (with Server Mode)

If you're running the container in Server Mode, you can configure clamdscan on your client machines to connect to it.

  1. Install clamdscan: Ensure clamdscan is installed on your Linux client.

  2. Configure clamdscan: Create a configuration file to point to your ClamAV server:

    cat << 'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/clamav/remote-clamd.conf
TCPSocket PORT
TCPAddr SERVER-IP
EOF
    • Replace PORT with your server's ClamAV port (e.g., 3310).
    • Replace SERVER-IP with the IP address of your ClamAV server container.

  3. Run clamdscan: Execute a scan on the client, specifying the remote configuration:

    clamdscan --config-file=/etc/clamav/remote-clamd.conf /path/to/scan

Standard Scan Options

For more control over your scans, you can pass additional clamscan arguments directly to the container. The -i flag (only print infected files) is included by default, but you can override or add to it.

docker run -it \
  -v /path/to/scan:/scan:ro \
  tquinnelly/clamav-alpine -i

Use -d instead of -it if you prefer to run the scan in detached mode.

Common clamscan Post-Arguments

You can append any of these arguments to your docker run command for scan customization:

  • -i: Only print infected files (default behavior).
  • --log=FILE: Save the scan report to a specified FILE.
  • --database=FILE/DIR: Load the virus database from a specific FILE or all supported database files from a DIR.
  • --max-filesize=#n: Skip files larger than #n bytes and assume them clean.
  • --max-scansize=#n: Set the maximum amount of data to scan for each container file.
  • --move=DIRECTORY: Move infected files to DIRECTORY.
  • --copy=DIRECTORY: Copy infected files to DIRECTORY.
  • --bytecode-timeout=N: Set the bytecode timeout in milliseconds.
  • --cross-fs: Scan files and directories across different filesystems (default: enabled).
  • --heuristic-alerts: Toggle heuristic alerts (default: enabled).
  • --alert-encrypted: Alert on encrypted archives and documents (default: disabled).
  • --quiet: Suppress all output except error messages.
  • --bell: Sound a bell upon virus detection.
  • --disable-cache: Disable caching and cache checks for hash sums of scanned files.

Volume Mounts 💾

Beyond the primary /scan directory, you can mount additional volumes for enhanced functionality.

  • Save AV Signatures: Persist your ClamAV database updates to avoid re-downloading them on every container start.

    -v /path/to/sig:/var/lib/clamav

  • Infected Files Directory: Direct infected files to a specific location using --move or --copy post-arguments.

    -v /path/to/infected:/infected

Examples 💡

Here's an example of a more advanced setup, typical for a persistent ClamAV scanner:

docker run -d --name=ClamAV \
  --cpuset-cpus='0,1' \
  -v /path/to/scan:/scan:ro \
  -v /path/to/sig:/var/lib/clamav:rw \
  tquinnelly/clamav-alpine -i --log=/var/lib/clamav/log.log --max-filesize=2048M

This command:

  • Runs the container in detached mode (-d) and names it ClamAV.
  • Limits CPU usage to cores 0 and 1.
  • Mounts /path/to/scan as a read-only directory inside the container for scanning.
  • Mounts /path/to/sig for persistent storage of ClamAV signatures and logs.
  • Instructs clamscan to only print infected files (-i).
  • Logs scan reports to /var/lib/clamav/log.log.
  • Skips files larger than 2GB (--max-filesize=2048M).

Supported Tags & Versions 🏷️

Tag ClamAV Version Alpine Version
latest 1.4.3-r0 3.22
edge 1.4.3-r2 Edge

Changelog 📜

2025-10-28

  • Updated ClamAV to 1.4.3-r2 on the edge tag.
  • Updated ClamAV to 1.4.3-r0 on the latest tag.

2025-04-15

  • Added support for server mode as well as scan mode.

2025-02-25

  • Updated ClamAV to 1.4.2-r0 on latest and edge tags.

2024-12-23

  • Updated Alpine to 3.21 for the latest tag.
  • Updated ClamAV to 1.4.1-r0 on the latest tag.

2024-12-03

  • Updated ClamAV to 1.4.1-r0 on the edge tag.

2024-09-15

  • Updated Alpine to 3.20.3 for the latest tag.
  • Updated ClamAV to 1.3.2-r0 on the edge tag.

2024-03-08

  • Updated ClamAV to 1.2.2-r0 on latest and edge tags.

2024-01-14

  • Updated openssl to 3.1.4-r3 on latest and edge to mitigate CVE-2023-6129.

2023-12-09

  • Updated ClamAV to 1.2.1-r0 on latest and edge tags.

2023-05-27

  • Fixed a new line issue in scan.sh.
  • Removed hardcoded ClamAV version from edge and latest Dockerfiles.

2023-05-26

  • Updated latest to Alpine 3.18.
  • Updated ClamAV to 1.10-r0 on latest and edge tags.

2023-04-23

  • Updated ClamAV to 1.0.1-r0 on the edge tag.

2023-04-22

  • Updated ClamAV to 0.105.2-r0 on the latest tag.

2023-02-11

  • Updated latest to Alpine 3.17.
  • Updated ClamAV to 0.105.1-r0.

2022-09-02

  • Updated ClamAV to 0.104.4-r1 on the edge tag.

2022-07-10

  • Updated latest to Alpine 3.16.
  • Updated ClamAV to 0.104.3-r0 on latest and edge tags.

2021-12-24

  • Updated packages for vulnerability scanning.
  • Reorganized commands.

2021-11-25

  • Bumped edge version for ClamAV to 0.104.1-r0.

2021-10-08

  • Bumped edge version for ClamAV to 0.103.3-r1.

2021-06-24

  • Bumped version for ClamAV to 0.103.3-r0.

2021-04-17

  • Bumped version for ClamAV to 0.103.2-r0.
  • Pull Requests:
    • Added Upgrade openssl (PR #5).
    • Added ca-certificates package (PR #6).

2021-01-31

  • Bumped version for ClamAV to 0.103.0-r1.

2020-10-06

  • Bumped version for ClamAV to 0.102.4-r1.

2020-05-23

  • Bumped version for ClamAV to 0.102.3-r0.
  • Added unrar and unrar libs.

2020-02-16

  • Bumped version for ClamAV to 0.102.1-r0.

Have questions or suggestions? Feel free to open an issue or pull request.

tianji