Need a U3 or USB Portable Drive Forum?

[LynnL]

I purchased a SanDisk Cruzer with U3 - and installed the Avast! AntiVirus U3 Edition offered by U3 as trial.  For those unfamiliar with the concept, take a look at http://portableapps.com or http://www.u3.com , but the basic idea is people like me who use lots of different Windows computers each day can "carry" our applications on a USB stick and NOT have to install them.  In fact, when in a customer's factory I am neither permitted Internet access nor can I install anything (but oddly enough they let me plug my USB stick in ... little do they know!  )

Unfortunately this version of Avast! U3 is not "compatible" or not "cooperative" with FireFox running from a USB drive  :'( ... which is something I'd wager 99.9% of U3 people will be trying to do.  Avast! seems to be scanning FireFox's temp files and thus Fire Fox just abandons them.  Looking in the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile show a fast growing list of files such as:
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-1.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-2.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,593 bookmarks-3.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-4.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-5.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-6.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-7.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-8.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-9.html

- and

11/21/2006 09:28 AM 5,809 sessionstore-1.js
11/21/2006 09:37 AM 5,323 sessionstore-2.js
11/21/2006 09:38 AM 6,569 sessionstore-3.js
11/21/2006 09:42 AM 14,517 sessionstore-4.js
11/21/2006 09:43 AM 12,970 sessionstore-5.js

I have seen this with the U3 version of FireFox 1.5 and the PortableApps FireFox version 1.5 and 2.0.  Literally, I am losing several MB of my USB drive per hour that I run FireFox and Avast! concurrently.  Shutting down Avast! U3 stops the creation of these abandoned temp files, but I still need to manually clear them.

I hope someone from Avast! either (or both) checks if there are any changes to the Avast! U3 to avoid this disk-space loss, as well as get involved in the FireFox open-source to help FireFox properly handle whatever situation Avast! U3 is creating.  Although I have not looked, I wonder if OpenOffice and other portable apps have similar issues with how Avast! U3 scans temp files.  I had planned to buy the Avast! U3 subscription, but clearly that would be foolish unless something changes.

Best Regards
- LynnL, Industrial Specialist, Digi Int'l
 

[Vlk]

Hi LynnL, and thanks for the heads up. We'll try to find a workaround to this (rather interesting) problem...

[LynnL]

Many thanks (hope you do consider setting up a special USB drive forum, as the concept is immensely "liberating"  for both technical travellers and students who often work on machines they don't "own")

If I put my guessing hat on, I'd guess that when FireFox is trying to delete the temp file, it receives an error since some other task has the file opened for reading (ie: scanning).  Instead of "hanging" waiting to delete ... which would be called a bug if the other task locking the file never frees up the lock ... FireFox just abandons the file.

If you do get any traction with the FireFox people (I am an assembly language and C programmer on am188 and Coldfire chips ... not a Windows/Linux programmer) it would be nice if at a minimum FireFox were to retry deleteing any such old temp files whenever it starts and/or shuts down.  This would be the safest long-term solution as similar "dual-access" could occur for other virus scanners and even backup utilities waiting for file change.

I did notice when trying to debug this issue if I had Avast! 4 Home Ed running on the host (instead of MicroTrend or Norton or Avira), then FEWER of these temp files were left behind.  But I'd still see a few per hour so I am guessing the host-based Avast! causes the U3 version to back off or run differently.

Thanks
- LynnL

[igor]

My guess is that you are right about the possible cause.

What I find strange, however, is creating the TEMP files on the U3 drive in the first place. I mean, USB drive is a slow device, I'm not even sure how many write cycles it is designed for... I wouldn't say frequent creation of temp files there is a good idea. (Don't know how frequent it really is here... maybe it's just the bookmark updates?)

[LynnL]

HoHa - yah, that is one of the ironies of USB life - a split personality.  Don't forget that flash (although getting better) also has a limited rewrite life!  After so many 100K rewrites it starts to fail.

Generally, the default "assumption" is that you cannot make assumptions about the hard drive ... so where would be a good place to put temp files that always applies? You may be logged in as a Guest or as a friend or even as a hostile customer unhappy you are there!  The "host" may be a virtual client, so all drive space is really far away on some Ethernet server.  I suppose /windows/temp or /winnt/temp are safe bets. 

Plus there are many USB carriers who pride themselves in NOT leaving any trace on the host system; they like the James Bond idea of working despite the system.

But considering I usually use my USB drive on 1 of 4 Windows PC, I personally would like a "smart" way to use C:/TEMP for temp files on "my" computers and use the USB drive for all the "not my" computers at customer sites.  But such flexibility in a standard product like FireFox is perhaps a year or two away.  Running FireFox as portable is still not the norm. Looking at something like OpenOffice portable - they install like 1200 files on the USB key, so about 35% of the space is wasted due to too many files smaller than the default 4K block size on the USB drive.  So again, how nice if they started packing all these small files into a ZIP or JAR-like file.  But with 120GB or more the norm in new computers, who sweats the waste of 10 or 20MB by a big suite like OpenOffice?

Anyway, the idea is new and as it grows in popularity, standard tools will evolve to be more USB friendly.  Your Avast! U3 is part of that evolution.  It is good of you to notice this opportunity. 

[Vlk]

Could you please try if the problem occurs even with the latest version of avast U3 Edition (1.0.108), released just yesterday?


Thanks
Vlk

[LynnL]

Running with 1.0.108,  11/29/2006 - much much better.

I was actually trying to fil up some log for you per the other topic here.  I ran Avast! U3 with the latest FireFox from www.portableapps.com for about 3 hours and only ended up with 1 lost temp file (before could be many per second).  here is the example log show the orphan "prefs-1.js" appearing.

I tried to get the FireFox people to take a bit of responsibility since *THEY* create these temp files, I argued they should at least when RESTARTING FF consider cleaning out any such old temps from previous runs and they received this very hostily. I was told (as if Avast is the ONLY thing that could create these) I had to either STOP using Avast or learn to handle the lost temps myself. I wish I were NOT an embedded C/C++ programmer for 68K CPU only, as I cannot directly understand open source Windows code like FireFox so cannot offer direct suggestions.

I'll put the full log for my time in the other thread.

;******
;
; Avast! Antivirus U3 Edition
;
; New session started: 12/1/2006 9:40:34
;
;******

9:41:07  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\prefs.js

• is OK

9:41:35  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\prefs-1.js [E] error 32 while scanning
9:41:36  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\prefs.js

• is OK

9:42:05  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK