Problem with Avast 3U - log file grows

[LynnL]

Another problem with Avast! U3 Ed (for USB drives) is that the AvastU3.log file keeps growing.  Mine is now 15MB and climbing - not good for a USB-based system.

One cannot delete (have sharing violation) unless one shuts down Avast! U3

There doesn't seem to be a way to turn this off (or better just "cap" so only the last say 1MB or some user defined max of data is saved).

Best regards
- Lynn Linse

[bob3160]

Why do you have 2 posts on the same subject???
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=25043.0

[Negeltu]

Why do you have 2 posts on the same subject???
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=25043.0

Is it the same subject?  I thought the other one was about abandoned firefox temp files...

[LynnL]

   They are not even close to being the same - that is why 2 posts.

Post #1 - Avast! U3 runs normally but causes another common tool to "lose space".  One would NOT see this unless you run both Avast! U3 and FireFox portable living on the USB drive in question - er, plus you must LOOK to see the loss.

Post #2 - Avast! U3 has a design over-sight - allowing a log file to grow "forever" on a USB drive is not a good idea.  Actually, I suspect it has some internal limit (perhaps 50MB?) which is more appropriate for modern 100+GB hard drives, but wouldn't be appropriate for a USB drive with 256MB or 1GB of space.  Of course, you need to look to see this also - I have a tool watching for % change in directories I assume are basically static.

Best Regards
- Lynn Linse, Principal Engineer / Industrial Specialist, Digi Int'l

[Vlk]

To trim the log, click the "Reset stats" button on the first page of avast U3 Edition GUI...

BTW I'm quite surprised your log is that big. I mean, normally, avast is quite idle (doesn't scan too many files) and the log stays moderately small. Maybe it's because in the case of your drive, it is rescanning some files over and over all the time? (a brief look at the contents of the log file should reveal any potential patterns)...


Thanks
Vlk

[LynnL]

Thanks Vik - part of the problem is there are at least 2 distinct types of USB drive users:

1) Someone with a few dozen or hundred data files using the USB stick as Microsoft's mystical "briefcase". Likely only a few files change per day and a simple Avast! U3 as-build seems good.  If they only travel between home & work they don't really need a Virus scanner on their USB stick. Students could benefit ... but how many actually "pay" for anti-virus subscriptions?

2) Someone like me with over 6000 files on my USB including apps like OpenOffice and FireFox. Since I have to use many Windows PC every day - many of my files change frequently. The issue with FireFox and Avast! fighting over temp files would have aggravated it as FireFox wold keep making new files for Avast! to scan & all get logged.

Avast! U3 seems targeted with the first kind of user in mind, even though I doubt many wil buy/pay for it.

I'm not worried about the life of my USB stick - a 2GB is worth $40 these days and it has been so liberating & useful I'll happily buy a new stick every few months if I need to.  I cannot explain how nice it is to walk between my desk, labs, DMZ units, and customer sites carrying "my world/desktop" in my pocket.  You can also see how useful a good virus "sanity scanner" could be.

Manually deleting the log is as useful as the way Windows happily leaves files in /Windows/temp for years - how many people's Mom or sis ever clean that out?  Given that Avast! U3 Edition is targeted at USB users who may only have 256MB to start with, I'd think a log limited to 1MB and moved to a single backup spot would be a better default. For example, FireFox keeps 6 days of bookmark backup, each day creating a new backup but deleting the oldest. In my case with 200K in my bookmark file this chews up 1+MB but at least it is bounded and won't grow undetected unless my bookmark files grows unexpectedly.

best regards
- Lynn A Linse

[igor]

Can you please paste a small part of the log (something like 20 lines) here? I'd like to know what is being stored there that makes it so big...

[LynnL]

Vik, unfortunately I manually deleted the old huge log a few weeks ago.

Here is a paste of the log from this morning (with your new, better engine) - it is about 16K created in 2.5 hours. The file prefs-1.js is the only temp file FF abondoned during that time - far better than the dozen or so that would show up per second before! I was running maps.yahoo.com and various google things which make heavy use of Java & flash, so I'm guessing that is part of the activity in the "sessionstore.js" trashing.  I purposely was saving pointless bookmarks as tests also - each of the bookmark.html scans likely represents such a save. At least now the old temp bomark-0x.html aren't being left behind.

As you can see FireFox is rewritting files every few minutes. I had peeked into the old large log before deleting and one could find a dozen or more of these "Ok" lines per second. I wage that's the cause of the large size. But I hope you also at some point put an upper bound into the Avast U3 such that it never allows the log to grow past "X" - whatever that number is.

Thanks
- Lynn

;******
;
; 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

9:42:13  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

9:42:16  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:42:17  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

9:42:40  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:42:50  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:43:06  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:43:16  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:44:07  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:44:17  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:44:29  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:44:48  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

9:48:39  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:48:58  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:55:18  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:55:28  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:55:38  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:55:49  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:57:12  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:57:22  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:57:38  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:58:10  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:58:20  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:58:30  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:58:41  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:58:51  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:59:01  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:59:11  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:59:21  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:59:27  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

9:59:38  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

9:59:48  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:05:00  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:17:30  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:17:40  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:17:50  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:18:03  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:18:13  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:18:23  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:18:33  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:18:43  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:18:54  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:19:04  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:19:14  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:19:24  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

10:19:24  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:19:34  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:19:45  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:19:58  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:20:08  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:20:19  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:20:30  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:20:40  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:20:50  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:21:19  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:21:33  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:22:24  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:22:34  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:22:45  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:22:55  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:23:08  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:23:18  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:23:29  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:23:39  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:24:26  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:24:38  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:24:58  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:25:18  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:25:33  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:25:43  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:25:53  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:26:27  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:26:37  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:49:16  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:49:28  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:50:04  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

10:50:23  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:07:02  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:07:14  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:07:24  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:09:56  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:10:06  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:10:17  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

11:10:27  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\sessionstore.js

• is OK

12:05:14  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

12:05:15  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\bookmarks.html

• is OK

12:05:16  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\prefs-1.js

• is OK

12:05:16  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\prefs-1.js

• is OK

12:05:16  F:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\prefs.js

• is OK

;******
;
; Session ended: 12/1/2006 12:07:11
; Files scanned: 552
; Files infected: 0
;
;******