ClamAV - Error, can't write to temp dir. - after 3.09 upgrade

After running the update to 3.09 VM went into the Checking Configuration mode and returned the error below. Up to this point the system has been working fine and I haven’t had any issues with the prior upgrades or config checks.

I was able to get by the error by changing the permissions on my /tmp folder to 777. However, I’m not sure if this was the right thing to do from a security standpoint. Prior to the change it was set to -
drwxr-xr-x root root

Also, does this indicate that ClamAV might not have been running correctly before, but VM was not reporting the error during the Check Config process?

Thanks, Mark M.


The ClamAV program clamscan does not appear to be working properly :

ERROR: Can’t write to temporary directory

----------- SCAN SUMMARY -----------
Known viruses: 45687
Engine version: 0.88
Scanned directories: 0
Scanned files: 0
Infected files: 0
Data scanned: 0.00 MB
Time: 0.869 sec (0 m 0 s)

Either adjust the path on the module configuration page, or disable this feature.


Any help is appreciated. Thx.

Hey Mark,

I think something funny has happened on your system. /tmp ought to look like this:

[[virtualmin@virtualmin universal]]$ ls -ld /tmp
drwxrwxrwt 5 root root 69632 Feb 28 11:45 /tmp

Obviously, that’s wide open (and I don’t recall what the “t” means!). Being only writable by root is definitely wrong for the /tmp dir, and would break a lot of things.

I don’t think this change could have had anything to do with the virtual-server module update, but I’ll check on a test system to be sure.

Thanks Joe,

You were right (as usual!). I checked the /tmp dir on another machine (fresh install of Cent 4.2) and there was a T there. After a little Googling I figured out that I should have used Chmod 1777 /tmp. I’m still not sure why my FC3 system didn’t have /tmp being writable, but not to worry, everything seems fine now.

Keep up the great work!

Mark M.