clamonacc monitoring of Docker overlay2 file system from Linux VM host doesn't work

Tom Jordan via clamav-users <[email protected]> Tue, 11 Nov 2025 18:40:09 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.comp.security.virus.clamav.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
HI,
I've been trying to get clamonacc to monitor the overlay2 file system 
where Docker container file systems are mounted on my Linux (Ubuntu 
24.04) VM, so that I can detect any malware which makes its way into a 
container (e.g., via downloaded). I am trying to do this by running 
clamonacc on the Linux host, since running clamonacc in each container 
would be too resource (memory) hungry, so I do not want to do it per 
container.

What works: If I modify clamd.conf so that OnAccessMountPath points to 
/home/<my_username> (which is a directory on my host VM) and run

sudo clamonacc --move=<directory_for_infected_files>

it works as I expect, in that it immediately logs as malware and moves a 
eincar.txt test malware file that I place in any of /home/<my_username> 
and it subdirectories.

What doesn't work: However, if I point OnAccessMountPath 
to /var/lib/docker/overlay2, which contains the merged overlay file 
system of a running Docker container in a subdirectory located on my 
host VM at

/var/lib/docker/overlay2/<sha>/merged

it doesn't detect any eincar.txt I copy anywhere into the container (I 
can see the eincar.txt when I shell into the container).

Can anyone please tell me why this is? I'm a little surprised this 
doesn't work since by comparison I can set up an inotify watcher (using 
the inotifywatch command line command) on the Linux VM host to 
watch /var/lib/docker/overlay2/ and this inotify watcher will happily 
detect and report events if I create/modify/delete any file in the 
running container.

Why does clamonacc not work across this Docker mount whereas inotify 
does and how do I fix it? Is there some config value that I have missed 
in clamd.conf?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thomas

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