Enable Avast AV (Avast Business Antivirus) security in Proxmox Mail Gateway (PMG)

PMG-Enable Avast Antivirus.md

Enable Avast AV (Avast Business Antivirus) security in Proxmox Mail Gateway (PMG) 6.x

This cheatsheet shows how to install and enable Avast antivirus (Avast Business Antivirus for Linux) on your PMG server.

Please note that Avast Business Antivirus for Linux is not provided for free and you need to buy license. You can test it for free after requesting trial license.

Prepare the apt package manager

Download and install avast.gpg key:

wget -q -O - https://files.avast.com/files/resellers/linux/avast.gpg | apt-key add -

Add Avast Linux repository to apt sources list, do sources update and then install the Avast package:

echo "deb http://deb.avast.com/lin/repo debian-buster release" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt update
apt install avast

Copy license file

If you already have your license file, you need to copy it to /etc/avast/:

cp license.avastlic /etc/avast/

You cannot run Avast service without license file. Buy lincese online or you can request trial key from Avast.

Create empty whitelist file (optional)

Avast engine looks for whitelist file at /etc/avast/whitelist on startup. If you want to avoid error messages in logs you can create empty whitelist file.

touch /etc/avast/whitelist

Start Avast service

To start Avast service:

service avast start

To check Avast service status:

service avast status

You should see service status as Active: active (running) .

Enable Avast PMG configuration

The last step is enabling Avast in configuration, use this command to enable it:

pmgsh set /config/admin --avast 1

Restart Proxmox SMTP Filter Daemon:

service pmg-smtp-filter restart

Updating virus database (VPS)

During the installation, virus database (VPS) is updated to the latest version and also crontab entry is created that will trigger VPS update task every hour.

You can also manually trigger update by this command:

/var/lib/avast/Setup/avast.vpsupdate