[clamav-users] daily.cvd vs main.cvd

[Paul Kosinski]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 12:00:00 -0400
Joel Esler wrote:

> You are not remembering correctly. That may have been true a decade
> ago, but for the last half dozen years or so the main stayed the
> same for every new release and was only updated when it was more
> efficient to update it than to continue downloading large daily?s. I
> seem to recall that the last update was late and that there was
> approximately a year between updates in earlier days, but even that
> varied.

According to our backup records (see below), in the 2 year period from
April 2008 to April 2010, there were *7* different main.cvd files (at
least), or more often than one every two releases (see below).


> You may be correct in that it's time for another update, but since
> it mostly impacts the load on network servers and not you and other
> clients, that?s something the team will need to analyze and decide.
> 
> All is correct here.  I'll check with the team of when
> the 'rollover' will take place, as this has a substantial impact on
> the mirror infrastructure, we have to let the mirrors know before we
> do it.  As you can imagine, the 7M+ users of ClamAV all downloading
> a main.cvd from a mirror is quite heavy on bandwidth if you aren?t
> expecting it.

I don't know exactly how big a new main.cvd file would be, but even
if it were as big as the current main.cvd (62 MB) *plus* the current
daily.cvd (28 MB) taken together, it would still be only 90 MB, which
is significantly less than the 140 MB for the 5 updates to the
daily.cvd file downloaded in one 24 hour period this week.

Paul Kosinski

P.S. Maybe it's time for an 'rsync' or 'drpm' approach for daliy.cvd?


++++++ From our records of CLAMAV files backed up

0.93
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 13050207 Apr 15  2008 main.cvd

0.93.1
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 13050207 Jun 10  2008 main.cvd.080610-2315

0.93.2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 15200793 Jul 12  2008 main.cvd.080712-1625

0.94
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 15200793 Sep  6  2008 main.cvd.orig
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 17457430 Sep  4  2008 main.cvd.080904-1709

0.94.1
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 18462921 Nov  7  2008 main.cvd

0.94.2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 18462921 Nov 28  2008 main.cvd.081128-2131

0.95
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 20091559 Mar 26  2009 main.cvd

0.95.1
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 20091559 Apr 10  2009 main.cvd.090410-2321

0.95.2
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 21253696 May 14  2009 main.cvd

0.95.3
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 21253696 May 14  2009 main.cvd.090514-1231

0.96
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 22906487 Apr  3  2010 main.cvd

0.96.1
  -rw-r--r-- 1 clamav clamav 22906487 Apr  3  2010 main.cvd