[clamav-users] ClamAV using high CPU and battery

[Kris Deugau]

Douglas Stinnette wrote:
> I have been getting reports of ClamAV using high CPU during full scans.

Well....  yes.... it's busy scanning the whole filesystem like it's been 
told to do.

> Also I am getting a complaint from faculty that ClamAV is heavily using 
> resources and causing loss of battery life.

If you're scanning a full system it's going to be busy for a while. 
Even regular Windows desktop AV packages usually take at least 30-40 
minutes for a full system scan.

> Are these normal functions of the application?

They're not really "functions of the application", they're operational 
requirements for it to do what you've asked it to do.

They're normal for any program that does a lot of heavy processing and 
filesystem access.  On *nix systems you can reduce its impact on other 
processing by renicing (setting its priority) lower, and if you're using 
a Windows build you should be able to use Task Manager to set the 
priority low.

Very few programs I've seen will actively manage their actual CPU usage 
so that they only use eg 50% of one core - some of the distributed 
computing projects are the only ones I can think of offhand.  Otherwise 
most programs run flat-out while they're running.

-kgd