CRITICAL ls MEMORY LEAK

[Brian Inglis]

On 2021-02-22 13:12, Doug Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 at 08:21, Satalink wrote:
>> I deal with a lot of very large files on a regular basis.  I've noticed that
>> when I delve into these directories using in mintty and issue the command ls
>> -l (or ls -color=auto),  a very large junk of memory is consumed.   The
>> memory leak seems to be proportionate to the number and size of files within
>> the containing folder.

> This is likely due to your virus scanner. If those files contain
> non-executable content, it is probably safe to disable virus scans for
> those files.
> 
> Something that ls does is triggering the scan. That scan causes the
> virus scanner to read the entire file. You should see extraordinary
> GPU and disk activity for some time after the ls completes. There
> might be processes or at least threads for each file being scanned.
> 
> Hopefully you will be able to identify a common folder in the path to
> those files where it is safe to disable scanning for that folder and
> all folders and files within that folder.

I've often wondered if the heavy activity is due to Windows' defaults to writing 
files with F+RX perms which triggers executable virus scans?

You can't have separate directory and file default perms and unlike Unix, 
Windows appears dumb about applying the X bit to files, probably because that 
would render downloaded executables non-X, and there is no easy way for users to 
change that, whereas Unix requires tools and users explicitly grant X perms.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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