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Forum Discussion
AntiVirus No Longer Updating
Since 30th September, I have been getting an email from my RN214 advising me that the "Antivirus scanner definition file update failed due to download failure. Check your Internet connection." I ...
but looking at ClamAV's Version Support Matrix it looks like they have a policy in regularly stopping updates for older versions in a rolling pattern, (very roughly 4 years after that version is released), rather than a definite break between an old and new format?
I don't know where you are trying to go with this.
Netgear distributed 0.100.2 until Nov 2021 (shortly after ClamAV stopped providing definition updates for it). The 6.10.6 release updated it to 0.103, which at the time was the newest long-term-stable release. Version 1.0 replaced 0.103 as the long-term-stable software in August 2022.
ClamAV deprecated 0.103 three years after release (in September 2024), and stopped providing definition updates for 0.103 in September 2025.
Version 1.0 is expected to reach EoL in Nov 2025, so ClamAV will start blocking definitions for it about a year from now.
Regrettably, Netgear never publicly announced the end of the ReadyNAS line, and customers never received emails announcing EoL. New product inventory dried up during Covid. That could have been a supply chain problem, but could also have been when the EoL decision was made. Whenever it happened, it's clear in hindsight that the decision was made before 2022 when version 1.0 replaced 0.103.
Ideally Netgear would have updated ClamAV to version 1.0 in 6.10.8 (shortly after ClamAV published it). But I suspect they no longer had the staffing needed to do that. Even if they had, it would only would have given us another year of AV updates.
If so, then I should be able to install the latest ClamAV on my Linux desktop PC and copy the database file across to the appropriate place in the ReadyNAS file structure.
Would that work - or is it too simplistic?
No idea if the old software would work with the newest ClamAV definitions. My guess is that ClamAV has multiple versions of the definitions on their servers. If that guess is correct, then the definition database for 1.4 wouldn't be compatible.
From a practical perspective, in principle another user could put 1.4 in a docker container and then install docker (+ the ClamAV container) on the NAS. Though installing docker has its own challenges, and no one has provided an OS-6 app for some years now.
"I don't know where you are trying to go with this."
I guess where I am trying to go with this is to try to investigate if there really is nothing that users can do to get an antivirus working again on the ReadyNAS in some form - assuming that Netgear will not.
I spent nearly 40 years of my working life as an engineer and many times had to resolve problems by "thinking outside the box" and approaching from different directions to try to come up with a solution. Sometimes I was successful, sometimes not - but it is in my nature to at least try.
So, I'll accept that there is nothing that we users can do to fix the antivirus on the ReadyNAS and ask a different question:
Is the lack of antivirus on the ReadyNAS actually a problem for me?
My family and I all run PCs using Linux, (Mint), nothing uses Windows and our phones and tablet are all Android.
If I install ClamAV on our PCs and some other antivirus on our Android devices, will that be just as effective?
Is the lack of antivirus on the ReadyNAS actually a problem for me?
If I install ClamAV on our PCs and some other antivirus on our Android devices, will that be just as effective?
IMO, it is sufficient to protect all the devices that load content onto the NAS.
Your backup plan can also factor into this. If you maintain an air-gapped backup (or a backup on a PC that is protected), then you could recover the NAS files if malware were to strike.
Note you can scan NFS or SMB mounted drives from a remote linux system, so periodically scanning the NAS shares from one of your Mint PCs is possible.
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