Hello, If you are managing a large number of machines, jitter helps spread freshclam's network traffic over time so the machines don't all hit the network simultaneously.
Here is a patch to add jitter to freshclam's update period. It adds a random number of seconds in [0, jitter) to the bigsleep. It adds a configuration option "Jitter" (-j, --jitter) to freshclam. The default value is zero seconds, which will cause no change to most users. Thank you, N $ diff -w clamav-0.97.5-original/freshclam/freshclam.c clamav-0.97.5/freshclam/freshclam.c 156a157 > mprintf(" --jitter=#n -j #n random jitter on check > period, in seconds\n"); 244a246,248 > /* Seed random number generator (for Jitter) */ > srand(time(0)); > 429a434 > int jitter; 455a461,467 > jitter = optget(opts, "Jitter")->numarg; > if( jitter < 0 ) { > logg("^Jitter must be a non-negative integer number of seconds."); > optfree(opts); > return 41; > } > 501a514,516 > if( jitter > 0 ) > sleep(bigsleep + (rand() % jitter) ); > else 505a521,522 > if( jitter > 0 ) > wakeup += rand() % jitter; $ diff -w clamav-0.97.5-original/shared/ clamav-0.97.5/shared/ diff -w clamav-0.97.5-original/shared/optparser.c clamav-0.97.5/shared/optparser.c 365a366 > { "Jitter", "jitter", 'j', TYPE_NUMBER, MATCH_NUMBER, 12, NULL, 0, > OPT_FRESHCLAM, "This option adds random jitter to freshclam's update > period.", "0" }, -- Nick Johnson _______________________________________________ http://lurker.clamav.net/list/clamav-devel.html Please submit your patches to our Bugzilla: http://bugs.clamav.net