freshclam: symbol lookup error: freshclam: undefined symbol: print_version, version FRESHCLAM_PRIVATE

Question

I was following this guide to install clamav from source on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and I stopped after getting the following error: freshclam: symbol lookup error: freshclam: undefined symbol: print_version, version FRESHCLAM_PRIVATE . Here are the commands I issued:

./configure --enable-check
make -j2
make check
make install
sudo cp /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf.sample /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf
sudo nano /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf

In freshclam.conf, I have just added # before Example to comment it out. Then:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/clamav
freshclam
freshclam: symbol lookup error: freshclam: undefined symbol: print_version, version FRESHCLAM_PRIVATE

What does this error mean?

Here are the outputs of ./configure --enable-check and make check:

./configure --enable-check

configure: Summary of detected features follows
              OS          : linux-gnu
              pthreads    : yes (-lpthread)
configure: Summary of miscellaneous features
              check       : -lcheck_pic -pthread -lrt -lm -lsubunit
              fanotify    : yes
              fdpassing   : 1
              IPv6        : yes
              openssl     : /usr
              libcurl     : /usr
configure: Summary of optional tools
              clamdtop    : yes (-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -lncurses -ltinfo)
              milter      : no (missing libmilter) (disabled)
              clamsubmit  : yes (libjson-c-dev found at /usr, linking=dynamic)
              clamonacc   : yes (auto)
configure: Summary of engine performance features
              release mode: yes
              llvm        : no (disabled)
              mempool     : yes
configure: Summary of engine detection features
              iconv       : yes
              bzip2       : ok
              zlib        : yes (from system)
              unrar       : yes
              preclass    : yes (libjson-c-dev found at /usr, linking=dynamic)
              pcre        : /usr
              libmspack   : yes (Internal)
              libxml2     : yes, from /usr
              yara        : yes
              fts         : yes (libc)

configure: WARNING:
****** libjson-c is known to share symbol names with other JSON libraries
****** which may result in crashes for applications that use libclamav.
****** Consider using --with-libjson-static=path/to/libjson-c.a,
****** providing a json-c library that was compiled with CFLAGS="-fPIC".


make check
PASS: check_clamav
PASS: check_freshclam.sh
PASS: check_sigtool.sh
SKIP: check_unit_vg.sh
PASS: check1_clamscan.sh
PASS: check2_clamd.sh
PASS: check3_clamd.sh
PASS: check4_clamd.sh
SKIP: check5_clamd_vg.sh
SKIP: check6_clamd_vg.sh
SKIP: check7_clamd_hg.sh
SKIP: check8_clamd_hg.sh
SKIP: check9_clamscan_vg.sh
============================================================================
Testsuite summary for ClamAV 0.103.0
============================================================================
# TOTAL: 13
# PASS:  7
# SKIP:  6
# XFAIL: 0
# FAIL:  0
# XPASS: 0
# ERROR: 0

P.S. This is not the first time I try to install clamav on this computer. I didn't have this error the first time, but then I removed some files manually after doing sudo make uninstall to completely remove clamav files and start installation from scratch. I also removed clamav user and group, and now they don't seem to be created automatically again, I wonder why.

Answer 1

I was able to solve this particular error by running ldconfig as root.