On Feb 10, 2012, at 12:19 PM, Reynolds, David C. wrote:
> I am (will be) running on a relatively large SGI Origin with a couple of 
> hundred processors available. Is there an easy configuration setting to 
> enable multiple clamd daemons to support multiple clamdscan clients in 
> multiscan mode?

Sure, clamd is threaded and likely has a default value of "MaxThreads 10"-- 
check clamd.conf.

> Each of the clamdscans are processing a particular set of subdirectories.  
> Minimal scan time is critical for this operation so that the more processors 
> that can be applied to the scan operation is important.
> 
> Is there a practical limit to the number clamd threads that can be supported 
> by one daemon?

Yes, but it's almost certainly OS-specific, so check your IRIX documentation on 
the system threading model(s) available (ie, 1:1, N:1, M:N) and how many 
userland threads it can handle well.  On the platforms I'm more familiar with, 
spawning over 512 (or maybe 511) threads causes the system to take a much 
slower path for managing them and mutex/locking primitives.

Perhaps one day ClamAV will look into kqueue and libdispatch for ideas on how 
to handle a pool of worker threads in a fashion that better integrates with the 
OS and it's ideas of how many threads should be running, considering # of CPUs, 
workload, and other factors.

> Does it even make sense to have multiple daemons?

Probably not, unless you need for them to have different malware databases.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck

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