I’ve recently noticed a frustrating niggle… When processing email, an Ubuntu Server (with all the updates applied) reports “Permission denied” when trying to virus scan attachments.

Apr  2 14:05:20 svr amavis[6376]: (06376-01) (!)run_av (ClamAV-clamd) FAILED - unexpected , output="/var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/parts: lstat() failed: Permission denied. ERROR\n"
Apr  2 14:05:20 svr amavis[6376]: (06376-01) (!)ClamAV-clamd av-scanner FAILED: CODE(0x30cf250) unexpected , output="/var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/parts: lstat() failed: Permission denied. ERROR\n" at (eval 136) line 899.
Apr  2 14:05:20 svr amavis[6376]: (06376-01) (!)WARN: all primary virus scanners failed, considering backups

When I look at the directories in question, I see this:

$ ls -ld /var/lib/amavis/tmp
drwxrwx--- 4 amavis amavis 4096 Apr  2 14:16 /var/lib/amavis/tmp
$ ls -ld /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/
drwxr-x--- 3 amavis amavis 4096 Apr  2 14:05 /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/
$ ls -ld /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/parts                                                                                                                                                                           
drwxr-x--- 2 amavis amavis 4096 Apr  2 14:16 /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/parts

I made sure the clamd user is a member of the amavisd group – but this didn’t fix anything. Can anyone tell me, specifically, which component wants what permissions – and… ideally… what to do to fix this?

Clarification: I am not looking an explanations of the fundamentals of permissions. I am looking for a solution appropriate to this specific problem – which, at first glance, at least, looks as if a component of the amavis suite (perhaps clamd) is using the wrong umask value. Of course, this fault may have arisen as a result of a number of bugs or configuration glitches. I am looking, specifically, for the most appropriate resolution for this case… where a ‘vanilla’ amavis/clamav install fails to access the contents of temporary folders it creates as/when required to scan inbound email.

I am aware of this similar (non-Ubuntu) question. The Redhat/Centos answer doesn’t solve the problem I experience with Ubuntu.

This problem is encountered on “Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS” – there are no pending updates.

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The group amavis has no write permissions for /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/ and /var/lib/amavis/tmp/amavis-20150402T140519-06376-PZcyHfOt/pa‌​rts – A.B. Apr 2 ’15 at 14:31
Try this chmod -R g+w /var/lib/amavis/tmp – A.B. Apr 2 ’15 at 14:35
The problem isn’t that I can’t change the permissions to permit group write on the directories… The problem is that I don’t know how to ensure that directories created under /var/lib/amavis/tmp/ – in future – get created with the correct permissions. This directory seems to be where amavis expands messages to inspect attachments. The defaults used to work… now, after some updates, it doesn’t. – aSteve Apr 2 ’15 at 20:57
Then work on your question. – A.B. Apr 4 ’15 at 9:43

4 Answers

A working solution is to change

AllowSupplementaryGroups false -> true

in /etc/clamav/clamd.conf

restart clamav-daemon

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2
This is what solved it for me (I’m on Debian Jessie). Adding clamav to the amavis group didn’t solve it. – chmike Feb 6 ’16 at 16:27
The AllowSupplementaryGroups option has been dropped in recent versions of clamav (0.99.2+, Jun 2, 2016 in upstream). – Daniel Vérité Aug 31 ’16 at 2:35
+1 This worked. The approved answer below DOES NOT. If you followed the Ubuntu AmavisNew wiki page (hopefully), you would have already added amavis/clamav as supplementary groups to one another. Approved answer does nothing but repeat this – and does not work. I am running default pkgs on 16.04.1 LTS. ref: help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixAmavisNew – bshea Feb 16 at 17:46

While the clamd user was a member of the amavis group, the clamd process was running as the clamav (not clamd) user.

Adding clamav to the amavis group solved the issue.

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As AllowSupplementaryGroups does not exist anymore, I ended by adding each user to the other group, like this:

usermod -a -G clamav amavis
usermod -a -G amavis clamav

(and restart everything just to be sure)

/etc/init.d/clamav-daemon restart
/etc/init.d/amavis restart
/etc/init.d/postfix restart

With this, no need to change folder permission on /var/lib/amavis/tmp (and I’m not sure those permissions will be left as is on the next apt-get upgrade…)

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