Feature request: resumable full scans (checkpoint/resume for interrupted scans)

Describe the feature request

Feature request: resumable full scans (checkpoint / resume for interrupted scans)

Use case

On a typical desktop that is powered on and off once per day, a full recursive scan of the home directory can take longer than the machine's daily uptime. In my case the scan took ~9 hours while the computer was on for ~7 hours a day. Because neither clamscan nor clamdscan can resume an interrupted scan, every shutdown killed the run (anacron sends SIGKILL to the scan process on shutdown), and each following day the scan restarted from the beginning — so the full scan practically never completed. Over a week, only one run finished, on the single day the machine happened to stay on for 44 hours.

What would help

A native checkpoint/resume capability: the ability to record which targets have already been scanned and, on the next run, continue from the first unscanned target instead of starting over. Optionally, an incremental mode that only scans files changed since the last successful scan.

Current workaround

I solved this outside ClamAV, in a wrapper script: the scan is split into per-directory targets, each completed target is recorded in a progress file, and an interrupted run resumes from the first unrecorded target. It works, but it requires reimplementing target enumeration, exclusion handling, and result aggregation around the scanner — logic that would be more robust inside ClamAV itself.

Environment

ClamAV 1.5.3 on Ubuntu 26.04, clamdscan -m --fdpass. Switching from clamscan to clamdscan --multiscan already cut the scan from ~9 h to ~71 min, but resumability remains the missing piece for machines that aren't on continuously.

Software settings

Version: 1.5.3
Optional features supported: MEMPOOL AUTOIT_EA06 ICONV

clamd.conf (selected):
MaxThreads = 16
MaxScanTime = 120000
ReadTimeout = 180
OnAccessIncludePath = Downloads, Videos, Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures

Database:
main.cld version 63, sigs: 3287027, built Wed Dec 17 2025
daily.cld version 28118, sigs: 355649, built Wed Sep 9 2026
Total signatures: 3961765

Platform:
Linux 7.0.0-31-generic, x86_64
Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS
Engine flevel: 233

How to reproduce the problem

N/A — this is a feature request, not a bug report. There is no malfunction to reproduce; the missing capability and the environment are described above.

Attachments

N/A.