NAS516,NAS214,NASPRO Antivirus Definition File Will Not Update

[McRob1]

All three of the above NAS units are running the latest firmware.  All three NAS are only turned on once a week to do backups.  The Antivirus definition files are dated June 20, 2021 on one unit and June 14, 2021 on the other two units.  None of them will update even after I turn off antivirus and then turn it back on.  All three of the NAS units have been running for over 8 hours now and all are connected to the internet and still will not update their Antivirus definition files to Sept 12, 2021.  Current firmware is 6.10.5 Hotfix 1 on all NAS units.  Does anyone have any ideas on how to manually update the Antivirus definition files on all of these NAS units?

Thanks

[McRob1 · Accepted solution]

@StephenB 

Well it looks like the virus software has now failed to update on four of my NAS units.  The last update was 9/16/2021.  I do not intend to manually update software that used to work correctly until Netgear did their last firmware update.

I have given up and turned off Antivirus under settings on these Netgear NAS units since it does not work anyway.  I hope that decision does not have negative consequences in the future.

Thanks for you help @StephenB in attempting to correct software issues that should not exist for many users.

I am  quickly loosing faith in Netgear products based on this and other recent router issues.  Netgear as a company appears to be changing from a user point of view.

Thanks again for you help.

[StephenB]

You could try logging into one of the NAS with ssh (logging in as root), and running freshclam (with no parameters).

[McRob1]

@StephenB 

Do you have any instructions for those of us that have never used windows terminal and attempted to use SSH?

I tried it yesterday on one of the three NAS units and was not successfull.  I was always denied permission even with the correct admin password.  I have no idea what setting I have wrong.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

[StephenB]

Log in as root when using ssh (but using the NAS admin password).  Then try running freshclam with no parameters.

You do need to be very careful with linux commands as you can easily do damage.  

[McRob1]

@StephenB 

Thanks for the hint.  I had no idea that I needed to log in as "root" rather than as "admin" but still use the admin account password.  That helped on two of the three NAS devices.

The NASPRO was not able to connect to get the latest virus definition file.  The other two NAS units that are also connected to the same switch had no problems updating using the freshclam ssh command.  See attached screen shot.

Maybe you might have another suggestion for this NAS?

Thanks

[StephenB]

---

@McRob1 wrote:

Maybe you might have another suggestion for this NAS?

---

Is ipv6 enabled on all three NAS, or just this one?

You could try renaming /var/lib/clamav/daily.cvd to something else, and then try running freshclam again.

[McRob1]

@StephenBIPV6 is enabled on all 3 NAS units.  Can you tell me where I would find /var/lib/clamav/daily.cvd and how I would rename it.  I assume that is yet another ssh command?

[StephenB]

---

@McRob1 wrote:

IPV6 is enabled on all 3 NAS units.  Can you tell me where I would find /var/lib/clamav/daily.cvd and how I would rename it.  I assume that is yet another ssh command?

---

cd /var/lib/clamav
mv daily.cld daily.tmp

If freshclam then works, you can enter this to delete the temporary file.

rm daily.tmp

If freshclam fails, you can name it back with

mv daily.tmp daily.cld

Maybe also show us the results of 

ls -al /var/lib/clamav

(which does a directory listing)

[McRob1]

@StephenB      

Thanks for the detailed instructions.

I had to modify the first command a little bit:

mv daily.cld daily.tmp was changed to mv daily.cvd daily.tmp.

The freshclam command did work but with errors that flashed by two quickly for me to catch.

I guess in the future I will see if it updates the virus definition file properly.

I attached a listing of the files in the directory after completion.

Thanks again for your help.  I learned a lot.

[McRob1]

@StephenB 

I just wanted to let you know that the problem NASPRO is still having issues.  The virus file did not automatically update overnight even though the NAS was left on.  I was able to use ssh with the freshclam command to get the virus difinition file to update this time without having to manually delete the daily.cvd file.  I guess this NAS now requires a manual update of the virus definition file from now on for some reason.

I did capture a strange error about clamd was not notified when running the freshclam command.  See attached.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this issue for this NASPRO device?

Thanks

[StephenB]

Did you try rebooting the NAS after you updated the definitions last time?  If not, maybe try that next.

Also, how much memory is in the Pro? 

[McRob1]

@StephenB 

I did not reboot the NASPRO after I updated the definitions last time.  I have attached mem_info.log file to show how much memory the NASPRO has installed.  I also did the same process on a NAS214 which had no issues updating the virus definition file last night automatically.  I have no idea why one worked and one did not.  I see where other users are having the same issue lately.  Is it possible that there is an OS problem here?

Thanks again for your help.

[StephenB]

---

@McRob1 wrote:

I have attached mem_info.log file to show how much memory the NASPRO has installed. 

Looks like you upgraded it from the stock 1 GB to 3 GB?  That makes sense if you are talking about a Pro 6 (which has 2 slots).

Anyway, more than 2 GB, so memory isn't the issue.

---

@McRob1 wrote:

I have no idea why one worked and one did not.  I see where other users are having the same issue lately.  Is it possible that there is an OS problem here?

---

The short answer is that I don't know what exactly is going on.  I don't normally run AV on my NAS, but I did enable if on my RN202 a while ago, to see if I also had a problem with the updates.  I didn't, so after some months I turned AV off again.

The OS could be involved (particularly the scripts added by Netgear to manage the AV).  And 6.10.5 included a fix for ClamAV failing to update the database.

But in most recent cases here (on 6.10.5 systems) the user ended up having to delete daily.cvd in order to get freshclam to work via ssh.  That seems to be pointing more at ClamAV.

[McRob1 · Accepted solution]

@StephenB 

Well it looks like the virus software has now failed to update on four of my NAS units.  The last update was 9/16/2021.  I do not intend to manually update software that used to work correctly until Netgear did their last firmware update.

I have given up and turned off Antivirus under settings on these Netgear NAS units since it does not work anyway.  I hope that decision does not have negative consequences in the future.

Thanks for you help @StephenB in attempting to correct software issues that should not exist for many users.

I am  quickly loosing faith in Netgear products based on this and other recent router issues.  Netgear as a company appears to be changing from a user point of view.

Thanks again for you help.