sophos 3.67 and wrapper script

[Martin Sapsed]

Julian Field wrote:
> The basis of the complaint is not that it is much slower to scan files, but
> it spends 3 times longer starting up before scanning the first file!
>
> Just get them to do a
>         time sweep /dev/null
> and they will soon see the difference between 3.66 and 3.67.
>
> The extra "disabling" switches reduce the time to scan each time, but make
> the startup time even slower

Here's my latest reply from a Sophos person about some more questions on
this:

-----
In 3.67 we introduced several new features to the way that Sweep for
UNIX works. Firstly the new 'harvester' *.vdb files which as I mentioned
before is designed to reduce network bandwidth during updating. However
for the future it is hoped that Enterprise Manager will eventually be
looking after updates for the *NIX platforms.

The ability to 'understand' regional characters. A quote from the UNIX
readme:

"This version of Sophos Anti-Virus for Unix contains support for
international characters in multibyte format on the Linux/Intel (libc6
only) and Solaris/SPARC plus Solaris/Intel platforms. Other platforms do
not currently support the use of international characters."

This seems to be causing an unexpected slow down. The "international
character support" issue should be resolved in the next version 3.68.
However calling sweep from a command line is going to take longer than
it used to due to the new functionality we are constantly adding.

Sophos has also changed the way we scan certain file types (mainly *.pdf
and *.rtf). This change does appear to be slowing down sweep as well.

You could also try the following:
Create a file called veex.ini and put it with the vdl.dat, edit it and
put this in it:

[Default]
Pdf=OFF
Elf=OFF
Rtf=OFF
Java=OFF

This will automatically turn off PDF / ELF / RTF / JAVA file handling
and should speed it up a bit.

The bottom line is that the time to start sweep will improve, but not
ever go back to the speed it used to start.

If speed is still suffering it might be worth looking at Sophie
(www.vanja.com) which uses SAVI and can run as a background daemon
(service).
------

I'd asked things like why split the vdl's as that only really helps
Remote Update users which only runs on Windows.

It's interesting that they promote Sophie but don't talk to Jules any more!

Cheers,

Martin

--
Martin Sapsed
Information Services               "Who do you say I am?"
University of Wales, Bangor             Jesus of Nazareth