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Business Products => Avast Business => Avast Business for Linux => Topic started by: ba123 on March 29, 2010, 08:49:18 AM
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hello,
since yesterday evening i am getting following error message when running avast
cannot initialze avast! engine: invalid agrument
3 independent instances on 3 different mashines are affected. Defenetely, nothing was changed on those systems. Could it be that the latest vps file (100328-1) is invalid? Exactly when this vps file was installed, it stopped working!
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Hello,
I'm getting the same error-message. Before the update of the 29th of march, everything worked ok, after the update AVAST isn't able to initialise.
I removed AVAST completely and installed it again but to no avail.
What's up?
Kind regards,
PeterVO
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anybody out there whose avast is still working with the 100328-1 vps file?
It would be nice to get some reaction of the support team to be honest.
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as far as I can see, now 100329-0 has been released, it has the same issue:
ERROR-0: New VPS: 100329-0 (date: 29.03.2010) succesfully installed.
$ avastcmd -aic -tA /tmp
avastcmd: can not initialize avast! engine: Invalid argument
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new version has been released:
$ avastcmd -V
avastcmd: avastcmd v3.0.1
VPS: 100329-1 (date: 29.03.2010)
Copyright(C) 2003-2007. ALWIL Software. All rights reserved.
but still not solved:
$ avastcmd -aic -tA /tmp
avastcmd: can not initialize avast! engine: Invalid argument
Is the development team aware of this issue?
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hello,
please try the latest version:
http://www.avast.com/linux-unix-edition#tab4
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Hello,
thanks for the reply. I am trying it.
I have no idea if I can manage it to install the new software on my systems in an acceptable period of time. Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
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Hello,
thanks for the reply. I am trying it.
I have no idea if I can manage it to install the new software on my systems in an acceptable period of time. Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
Hallo,
on my side it works OK:
zilog@sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build$ ./stestik /etc/passwd
Status: 0 (Success)
VPS info: Structure 2147483659 Version 268642561 UncompressSize 55881907 Compiled 29.03.2010
here-init
STATUSzhandle: 0
I'm 0 running, variable at 0xbf863380, handle 0x85457f8.
/etc/passwd
FILE: /etc/passwd SIZE: 483 OFFSET: 0 SIZE: 483[ OK ]
Thread 0 has found 0 viruses.
Waiting on getchar(); all handles closed, reloading
----
on Mac, works OK, but indeed, avastcmd started to fail. With older 400.vps it works OK, with new one not. BUT, customised engine which doesn't use SHM memory sharing, works still OK (used on Mac machines) - so here would be the cause. Checking the cause right now...
pc
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Hello,
thanks for the reply. I am trying it.
I have no idea if I can manage it to install the new software on my systems in an acceptable period of time. Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
Hallo,
on my side it works OK:
zilog@sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build$ ./stestik /etc/passwd
Status: 0 (Success)
VPS info: Structure 2147483659 Version 268642561 UncompressSize 55881907 Compiled 29.03.2010
here-init
STATUSzhandle: 0
I'm 0 running, variable at 0xbf863380, handle 0x85457f8.
/etc/passwd
FILE: /etc/passwd SIZE: 483 OFFSET: 0 SIZE: 483[ OK ]
Thread 0 has found 0 viruses.
Waiting on getchar(); all handles closed, reloading
----
on Mac, works OK, but indeed, avastcmd started to fail. With older 400.vps it works OK, with new one not. BUT, customised engine which doesn't use SHM memory sharing, works still OK (used on Mac machines) - so here would be the cause. Checking the cause right now...
pc
Well, here's the cure:
do as root: sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000
reason? older kernels have an artificial limitations which dictates the maximum size of one SHM block in bytes. And, one block of our database exceeded this limit. so just, relax them to more reasonable values. that's it.
sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build# sysctl -a | grep shm
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 33554432
---> 0x6de86d68 8880136 zilog 600 33178972 3
just issue those upon system startup in /etc/init.d/rcS or similar system-wide initscript on your distribution (see /etc/inittab, the si:: line).
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I have tested the new version of avast and found that it did not solve the problem:
dpkg -l |grep avast
ii avast4server 3.2.0 avast! Antivirus toolkit
ii libavastengine 4.7.6 avast! engine library
avastcmd -V
avastcmd: avastcmd v3.2.0
VPS: 100329-1 (date: 29.03.2010)
Copyright(C) 2003-2010. ALWIL Software. All rights reserved.
$ avastcmd -aic -tA /tmp
avastcmd: can not initialize avast! engine: Invalid argument
1) Which changes were done in the versions
avast4server-3.0.1-i586.deb to avast4server-3.2.0-i586.deb resp
libavastengine-4.7.4-i586.deb to libavastengine-4.7.6-i586.deb
Were those versions just released to fix this bug or were there other changes?
Are there any release notes available?
2) zilog, thanks for your investigations and suggestions. I have to study what exactly your command does and if it can harm my systems.
a) Could you please define "old kernel"? I can reproduce the problem on 2.6.31-20 which isn't that old imho.
b) I cannot just execute some commands and hope that anything will still work, which brings me again to my question of my previous post:
3) Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
Thanks.
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I have tested the new version of avast and found that it did not solve the problem:
$ avastcmd -aic -tA /tmp
avastcmd: can not initialize avast! engine: Invalid argument
1) Which changes were done in the versions
avast4server-3.0.1-i586.deb to avast4server-3.2.0-i586.deb resp
libavastengine-4.7.4-i586.deb to libavastengine-4.7.6-i586.deb
Were those versions just released to fix this bug or were there other changes?
Are there any release notes available?
2) zilog, thanks for your investigations and suggestions. I have to study what exactly your command does and if it can harm my systems.
a) Could you please define "old kernel"? I can reproduce the problem on 2.6.31-20 which isn't that old imho.
b) I cannot just execute some commands and hope that anything will still work, which brings me again to my question of my previous post:
3) Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
Thanks.
This has nothing to do with avast versions. It's just a low default value, determining the resource usage on your system - and avast's database 400.vps has grown to the size where this limit is simply not sufficient anymore. That's all. So, there's no other solution than just relaxing this number. It's just a variable after all...
regards,
pc
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1) won't harm your system. what harms your system is that nonsensually-low value. it's just an artificial sysctl-limit.
2a) there are also customised kernels that have those limits relaxed already, etc. it's just a default value in the sources, fortunately runtime-tunable.
2b) you can, and in this case, you really should. there's no sideeffect - loading kernel.shmmax with bigger value is harmless.
3) it's not wise to use old vps - this has no sense. rather adjust your system to be able to run the latest one :).
regards,
pc
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hello zilog,
thanks, but, I still don't know if i have to upgrade to the new version of avast or not. Since I was asked in this thread to upgrade my avast and to try if it solves the issue, I thought maybe this release was made to fix the bug described in this thread. Obviously it was not, so, what is this new version good for? It would be nice if somebody could say which improvements have been done so that I can decide if an update is urgent or not.
In your example, you have increased the max shared memory by about 300%. What is the acutal amount of shared memory required by avast? Is this value expected to even grow? I am asking this because you wrote
And, one block of our database exceeded this limit.
This sounds to me that the required amount of shared memory won't increase with increasing file/database size of the vps, until a new big block comes in, am I right?
BUT, customised engine which doesn't use SHM memory sharing
Why is shared memory used anyway then? Does it make sense to add some command line parmeter to disable usage of shared memory? Or disable it at all?
Thanks.
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the release was built by me, fixes some minor bugs, but NOT this one. because it's about kernel limitation versus 400.vps size.
the value will grow, so 300% is good estimate for the 400.vps lifetime (we'd like to move to avast5 style too, for Linux). the block which exceeded the limit is the one which is growing fastest - macro-block. Shared memory was used in Windows world, and when porting it to Linux, this principle was kept (bad decision, from my point of view - SHM is a problem on many platforms). It's deep inside the whole engine, far below the level where cmdline-switch can change the system-wide functionality. In other words, you need customised libavastengine.so.
pc
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hello,
please try the latest version:
http://www.avast.com/linux-unix-edition#tab4
Thanks all the same but that is a link to the server version. I'm trying to get the free home version working. Any ideas?
Cheers,
Michael in Melbourne, Australia.
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Any ideas?
read the entire thread ;)
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Any ideas?
read the entire thread ;)
Again:
1) it's not a bug, don't look for newer version - rather the VPS size has grown and reached the 32MB limit in linux kernel. This limit is rather artificial, conservative, ande could be changed using /proc or sysctl to more reasonable value. just change the limit. otherwise, virus database cannot fit into SHM. no way.
2) details here: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=57775.0
regards,
pc
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Hi folks.
just keep the older version installed... http://www.avast.com/files/linux/avast4workstation_1.2.0-2_i386.deb (http://www.avast.com/files/linux/avast4workstation_1.2.0-2_i386.deb)
extracte the 400.vps file from the current version
paste that file in to your /.avast folder in your home folder.
and the database is up to date.
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Hello,
thanks for the reply. I am trying it.
I have no idea if I can manage it to install the new software on my systems in an acceptable period of time. Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
Hallo,
on my side it works OK:
zilog@sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build$ ./stestik /etc/passwd
Status: 0 (Success)
VPS info: Structure 2147483659 Version 268642561 UncompressSize 55881907 Compiled 29.03.2010
here-init
STATUSzhandle: 0
I'm 0 running, variable at 0xbf863380, handle 0x85457f8.
/etc/passwd
FILE: /etc/passwd SIZE: 483 OFFSET: 0 SIZE: 483[ OK ]
Thread 0 has found 0 viruses.
Waiting on getchar(); all handles closed, reloading
----
on Mac, works OK, but indeed, avastcmd started to fail. With older 400.vps it works OK, with new one not. BUT, customised engine which doesn't use SHM memory sharing, works still OK (used on Mac machines) - so here would be the cause. Checking the cause right now...
pc
Well, here's the cure:
do as root: sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000
reason? older kernels have an artificial limitations which dictates the maximum size of one SHM block in bytes. And, one block of our database exceeded this limit. so just, relax them to more reasonable values. that's it.
sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build# sysctl -a | grep shm
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 33554432
---> 0x6de86d68 8880136 zilog 600 33178972 3
just issue those upon system startup in /etc/init.d/rcS or similar system-wide initscript on your distribution (see /etc/inittab, the si:: line).
Which lines of code do I issue in the rcS file? Is it just sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000?
or is the next lines?
sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build# sysctl -a | grep shm
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 33554432
Thanks
-
Hello,
thanks for the reply. I am trying it.
I have no idea if I can manage it to install the new software on my systems in an acceptable period of time. Could you please make available the latest working vps file for the old version of the software resp. let me know where I could get it?
Hallo,
on my side it works OK:
zilog@sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build$ ./stestik /etc/passwd
Status: 0 (Success)
VPS info: Structure 2147483659 Version 268642561 UncompressSize 55881907 Compiled 29.03.2010
here-init
STATUSzhandle: 0
I'm 0 running, variable at 0xbf863380, handle 0x85457f8.
/etc/passwd
FILE: /etc/passwd SIZE: 483 OFFSET: 0 SIZE: 483[ OK ]
Thread 0 has found 0 viruses.
Waiting on getchar(); all handles closed, reloading
----
on Mac, works OK, but indeed, avastcmd started to fail. With older 400.vps it works OK, with new one not. BUT, customised engine which doesn't use SHM memory sharing, works still OK (used on Mac machines) - so here would be the cause. Checking the cause right now...
pc
Well, here's the cure:
do as root: sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000
reason? older kernels have an artificial limitations which dictates the maximum size of one SHM block in bytes. And, one block of our database exceeded this limit. so just, relax them to more reasonable values. that's it.
sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build# sysctl -a | grep shm
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 33554432
---> 0x6de86d68 8880136 zilog 600 33178972 3
just issue those upon system startup in /etc/init.d/rcS or similar system-wide initscript on your distribution (see /etc/inittab, the si:: line).
Which lines of code do I issue in the rcS file? Is it just sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000?
or is the next lines?
sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build# sysctl -a | grep shm
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 33554432
Thanks
Hallo,
grepping - just to get the limits (to check whether your system is affected by this limit-exhaustion).
Then, sysctl -w is a method how to set internal kernel variables without any dependence on the /proc filesystem (so, you can place it anywhere in your rcS script).
regards,
pc
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Firstly thanks to Zilog for providing the information on how to fix this issue. :)
I can confirm that running sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=128000000 from a command prompt works in my installation of Fedora 12.
For all Fedora users experiencing this problem I can suggest that after looking into how the init process works in this distro it would appear that the most appropriate place to add sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=128000000 is in /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
See http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f12/en-US/html/s1-boot-init-shutdown-run-boot.html (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f12/en-US/html/s1-boot-init-shutdown-run-boot.html) for details.
HTH
Mica
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A clarification. If you go to a terminal and execute sudo sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000 and then start up Avast, it will run normally. However, if you reboot, the fix will go away and you must then redo sudo sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000. I admit to being command line impaired, by choice, not lack of understanding. I think the rest of the suggested fix will in effect run when ever you boot and thus Avast will always run properly. Please give a better explanation of this part of the suggested fix. Where should these lines go? Who or what is sinclair? Etc.
hbbliss
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A clarification. If you go to a terminal and execute sudo sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000 and then start up Avast, it will run normally. However, if you reboot, the fix will go away and you must then redo sudo sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000. I admit to being command line impaired, by choice, not lack of understanding. I think the rest of the suggested fix will in effect run when ever you boot and thus Avast will always run properly. Please give a better explanation of this part of the suggested fix. Where should these lines go? Who or what is sinclair? Etc.
hbbliss
The command sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000 should go to the init-script, which is run right after boot. this is DISTRIBUTION DEPENDENT, but /etc/init.d/rcS is good bet for all SysV-like distros, Fedora has etc/rc.d/rc.local, and so on. There are 600 different distros, so this may vary a bit, but misplacing the line would never hurt - at most it won't raise the limit and avast will return the error as before.
sinclair is my local computer (and the most cute brand of 80's home computers ever).
regards,
pc
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According to may information this is the rare issue occurred with Avast antivirus. If you want avoid this error, for that you first need to uninstall your Avast antivirus. Then restart your computer system, and then reinstall avast antivirus over it. I suggest you to try out this solution, and let me know if you are able to solve this issue or not.
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According to may information this is the rare issue occurred with Avast antivirus. If you want avoid this error, for that you first need to uninstall your Avast antivirus. Then restart your computer system, and then reinstall avast antivirus over it. I suggest you to try out this solution, and let me know if you are able to solve this issue or not.
Nope. reinstalling avast has an sideeffect - VPS will return back to the version which is bundled with the installer - which is still under the limit (and that's why it works seemingly again). so it's no solution at all. raise the limit.
regards,
pc
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I use Avast on a Fedora12 32bit on laptop and 64bit on desktop and tested this to work on both machines. Not mine .. found this solution on an Ubuntu forum.
I made the edit in the /etc/sysctl.conf file by adding the following 2 lines at the end of the file:
#avast antivirus bug fix
kernel.shmmax = 67108864
Save the file and reboot the machine
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Well, here's the cure:
do as root: sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000
reason? older kernels have an artificial limitations which dictates the maximum size of one SHM block in bytes. And, one block of our database exceeded this limit. so just, relax them to more reasonable values. that's it.
sinclair:/mnt/storage/t/feb2010build# sysctl -a | grep shm
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 33554432
---> 0x6de86d68 8880136 zilog 600 33178972 3
just issue those upon system startup in /etc/init.d/rcS or similar system-wide initscript on your distribution (see /etc/inittab, the si:: line).
This worked fine... Will I have to type this command each time I reboot... Rare as rocking horse droppings
Derek
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According to may information this is the rare issue occurred with Avast antivirus. If you want avoid this error, for that you first need to uninstall your Avast antivirus. Then restart your computer system, and then reinstall avast antivirus over it. I suggest you to try out this solution, and let me know if you are able to solve this issue or not.
Nope. reinstalling avast has an sideeffect - VPS will return back to the version which is bundled with the installer - which is still under the limit (and that's why it works seemingly again). so it's no solution at all. raise the limit.
regards,
pc
This description does not reflect what happened to my fresh Ubuntu 10.04 (in a VirtualBox running in a Mac). I installed avast, and it worked well, initially. Unfortunately, I clicked a couple of times on the avast icon while it was updating the virus database, opreration which failed. Since then, avast does not run, and reports a very similar invalid-argument message. So I uninstalled (with sudo dpkg -r <avast-name>) and reinstalled (sudo dpkg -i <avast-name>.deb), with supposedly the low-size initial database. But avast insists in not running, and giving the same message. So I uninstalled.
I will try to manually increase the limit. But, again, there is something wrong, it seems, with the description, and maybe the origin of the problem that is have just described is different from the share limit.
Thanks. Best regards,
José
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According to may information this is the rare issue occurred with Avast antivirus. If you want avoid this error, for that you first need to uninstall your Avast antivirus. Then restart your computer system, and then reinstall avast antivirus over it. I suggest you to try out this solution, and let me know if you are able to solve this issue or not.
Nope. reinstalling avast has an sideeffect - VPS will return back to the version which is bundled with the installer - which is still under the limit (and that's why it works seemingly again). so it's no solution at all. raise the limit.
regards,
pc
This description does not reflect what happened to my fresh Ubuntu 10.04 (in a VirtualBox running in a Mac). I installed avast, and it worked well, initially. Unfortunately, I clicked a couple of times on the avast icon while it was updating the virus database, opreration which failed. Since then, avast does not run, and reports a very similar invalid-argument message. So I uninstalled (with sudo dpkg -r <avast-name>) and reinstalled (sudo dpkg -i <avast-name>.deb), with supposedly the low-size initial database. But avast insists in not running, and giving the same message. So I uninstalled.
I will try to manually increase the limit. But, again, there is something wrong, it seems, with the description, and maybe the origin of the problem that is have just described is different from the share limit.
Thanks. Best regards,
José
Hallo,
just delete the .avast directory in your home directory (corrupted 400.vps is probably there and blocks the loading of the app).
regards,
pc
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I did:
do as root: sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000
It worked perfect!
Thanks to Zilog.
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solve this by typing this as root in command line.
$ sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=100000000
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This is still a problem! Why users must to google to solve this problem?!
"$ avast
avast: can not initialize avast! engine: Недопустимый аргумент"
It's too stupid error message.
It must be something like:
"Please grow your /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax value.
E.g. 1: echo 128000000 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
E.g. 2: sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=128000000
You can add this to file /etc/init.d/rcS before any exec calls. Sorry, we are trying to filnd better solution of this problem.
------------------------------------------------
Your Avast command. We always love you."
Somebody writes, that it is limitation of old kernels...
So:
$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu 3.5.7-zen #1 ZEN SMP Fri Oct 19 05:56:51 MSK 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
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http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=57775.0
;)
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I am starting to use Linux Ubuntu 12.10 and trying to install Avast for Linux 64 free version.
I got the program registered and clicked update database but the laptop froze just before completing the update. Since then the program won't open even after I reinstalled and re-entered the reg code I got after requesting it again.
How do I overcome the blocking message?
hello,
since yesterday evening i am getting following error message when running avast
cannot initialze avast! engine: invalid agrument
3 independent instances on 3 different mashines are affected. Defenetely, nothing was changed on those systems. Could it be that the latest vps file (100328-1) is invalid? Exactly when this vps file was installed, it stopped working!
-
I am starting to use Linux Ubuntu 12.10 and trying to install Avast for Linux 64 free version.
I got the program registered and clicked update database but the laptop froze just before completing the update. Since then the program won't open even after I reinstalled and re-entered the reg code I got after requesting it again.
How do I overcome the blocking message?
hello,
since yesterday evening i am getting following error message when running avast
cannot initialze avast! engine: invalid agrument
3 independent instances on 3 different mashines are affected. Defenetely, nothing was changed on those systems. Could it be that the latest vps file (100328-1) is invalid? Exactly when this vps file was installed, it stopped working!
I'm not quite sure if I understand your situation. Are you getting the same problems described in this topic, or something else entirely? :)