I am trying to follow: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Amavisd Which seems to really be written for Centos 5, with just some selinux references for Centos 6. There are real problems here for Centos 6 with the userids section. It gives the following command and result: cat /etc/passwd | grep "amavis\|clamav" clamav:x:101:102:Clam Anti Virus Checker:/var/clamav:/sbin/nologin amavis:x:102:103:Amavis email scan user:/var/amavis:/bin/sh But my Centos 6.3 has: clam:x:494:490:Clam Anti Virus Checker:/var/lib/clamav:/sbin/nologin amavis:x:493:489::/var/spool/amavisd:/sbin/nologin Note the difference in userid clam instead of clamav. So this causes problems with the group recommendation: In addition, the clamav user should automatically have been added to the amavis group: # groups clamav clamav : clamav amavis If not, you can manually add clamav to the amavis group: gpasswd -a clamav amavis so I did: gpasswd -a clam amavis So far, it seems just changing what userid is now used by clamav... But in testing for spam I see the following in /var/log/maillog Jan 23 15:56:17 test1 amavis[25669]: (25669-01) (!)run_av (ClamAV-clamd) FAILED - unexpected , output="/var/spool/amavisd/tmp/amavis-20130123T155617-25669/parts: lstat() failed: Permission denied. ERROR\n" I checked this directory tree and all along the tree the permissions are to amavis:amavis So where is my permission problem?