[clamav-users] How to boost clamav? Reloading database results in a talking timeout?

[G.W. Haywood]

Hi there,

On Thu, 12 Sep 2019, Micah Snyder (micasnyd) via clamav-users wrote:

> https://bugzilla.clamav.net/show_bug.cgi?id=10979#c19
> This patch applies to the current head of dev/0.102 ...

If the development version is a step too far, the two files which I
posted on September 10th implement a patch which has been sitting on
the ClamAV Bugzilla (at #c2) for nearly three years:

https://bugzilla.clamav.net/show_bug.cgi?id=10979#c13
https://bugzilla.clamav.net/show_bug.cgi?id=10979#c14

These replace two files in the current (v0.101.4) release, to produce
results very similar to those from the patch at #c19 for v0.102.x.

Unfortunately there are so many cosmetic changes in the development
version that a direct comparison of the patches might be tedious, but
the essentials are the same.  Load new data in a separate thread, and
in the meantime scan using the old database; switch database pointers
(virtually instantaneous) on reload completion; ignore database reload
requests if reloading is already in progress; and when the old data is
no longer needed, drop it.  Test results and/or observations welcome.

This will not of course help start-up times at all, but it's easy to
arrange to load a smaller database at startup if that's what you feel
you must do - there has been a discussion about using what I'll call
non-standard databases recently.  Personally I don't see the need for
anything like that; the runtimes of my clamd daemons are rarely less
than months, even if I'm testing things, so it's of no consequence if
loading the data at the beginning of a run takes a couple of minutes.
Since I'm only scanning mail, rather than scan it with less than the
full deck I'll just delay it a couple of minutes.  Until I worked on
this patch, that's what I'd been doing on every database reload and,
as I've always maintained, it's really no big deal.

> ...do not confuse the fact that we are paid with the thought that
> you are paying us.

I'm not sure that ham-fisted attempt at a justification was entirely
called for, Micah.

You had a patch for several years.  Then, two and a half days after I
posted the two files shown above, you're galvanized into action; but
you studiously avoid mention of the prior work by several people, and
then imply that people are confused when everything is crystal clear.

> We of course always appreciate help from the community ...

Perhaps you could try to make it a little more obvious.

-- 

73,
Ged.