[clamav-users] Freshclam network unreachable

[G.W. Haywood]

Hi there,

On Mon, 8 Mar 2021, Adam Bashore via clamav-users wrote:

> I'm able to telnet to port 80 at db.local.clamav.net without issue. but I
> get a 403 forbidden when i try to download main.clv directly with wget (wget
> http://db.local.clamav.net/main.cvd)

There's been a flurry of recent activity on the mailing list about the
abuse of ClamAV DB service, see the archives for more detail but I
think Joel's reply has answered this part.

> I'm not convinced that it's a network issue. Can anyone explain why
> freshclam appears to be trying IPv6 even though the host only has an IPv4
> address on eth1?

I think it is a network issue.  Most network software doesn't know
what interface it's going to use, it just asks the resolver for an
address.  Your resolver provides an IPv6 address and freshclam tries
to use it.

To build freshclam (and everything else) from source without IPv6
support you could (at least theoretically, I've never tried it myself)
use the 'configure' option '--disable-ipv6'.  Alternatively, which I'd
suggest is preferable, you can fix the network's IPv6 connectivity.

-- 

73,
Ged.