# Clamd takes 55s loading signatures

## Goverp

My apologies if this is the wrong forum - I don't know if clamav performance counts as security.

Is my experience - that clamd takes an age to start - typical?

It's standard Gentoo setup, (OpenRc, 4-cpu AMD box running at 1.6 GHz, 6 Gb RAM, files on 4 disk RAID 5 array) showing no performance issues in general.  But during startup, I get messages about waiting for clamd to start, and it times out.  Looking at /var/log/clamav/clamd.log, it takes about 55 seconds to load 6568420 signatures, which seems pretty damn slow.

I can find nothing on the web, apart from some old bugs in 2007, and nothing in clamav's bugzilla.

FWIW,

app-antivirus/clamav-0.99.4-r1

USE="bzip2 iconv ipv6 -clamdtop -libressl -metadata-analysis-api -milter (-selinux) -static-libs {-test} (-uclibc)"

Perhaps there are faster alternatives.

----------

## bunder

This is from an i7 920 but confined to a single cpu.

```
Mon Jul  9 17:48:10 2018 -> Reading databases from /var/lib/clamav

Mon Jul  9 17:48:34 2018 -> Database correctly reloaded (6568737 signatures)

```

If I had to guess, your single thread speed is making it slow.

----------

## Fitzcarraldo

For comparison, my laptop with Intel Core i7-4810MQ (2.80GHz) 6MB and 16 GB RAM takes around 11 seconds to load the ClamAV DB:

```
Mon Jul  9 19:36:24 2018 -> Reading databases from /var/lib/clamav

Mon Jul  9 19:36:35 2018 -> Database correctly reloaded (6568420 signatures)
```

```
$ eix -I clamav

[I] app-antivirus/clamav

     Available versions:  0.99.4-r1 ~0.100.0 {bzip2 clamdtop doc iconv ipv6 libressl metadata-analysis-api milter selinux static-libs system-libmspack test uclibc}

     Installed versions:  0.99.4-r1(02:05:45 03/04/18)(bzip2 clamdtop iconv ipv6 -libressl -metadata-analysis-api -milter -selinux -static-libs -test -uclibc)

     Homepage:            https://www.clamav.net/

     Description:         Clam Anti-Virus Scanner
```

----------

## Goverp

Thanks for the numbers.  From that it looks like I just ignore it; certainly not worth upgrading my system just for clamav!  I think it's only ever flagged up false-positive hits for PUAs ("Possibly Unwanted Applications").

----------

