Image Artist: What do I need to consider when using Antivirus (AV) software?

ImA is a containerized solution utilizing the Docker architecture.

The Docker documentation provides the following advice:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/antivirus/

For ImA this means adding the /var/lib/docker data volume to the AV software exclusion list. It is also suggested that a maintenance window is scheduled to perform the scan whereby Docker is stopped, the scan is run and Docker restarted.

In addition the exclusion list may also include the following:

• The ImA installation directory and any file or directory that directly interacts with ImA.
• /ImA directory where the db backups are stored.
• If a custom storage location or mount point is used then the files and directories associated with that custom storage location should also be excluded from the scanning process.
• Where an external slurm cluster is used it may also be necessary to exclude any files and directories associated with the external cluster.

For client PCs where the gemma-client or ImA-Loader is being used, it is recommended that the directory containing the raw data and the the path to the ImA Loader installation directory are added to the exclusion list.

If the AV software on the client PC is scheduled to run a full scan periodically, then it is important to consider the scenario where the upload process might take a long time to complete (due to the size of the data sets being uploaded); if a virus scanner locks any of the files during the upload process, this too will cause problems.