How stable is this release?

[Noiz]

Hi all.

We've just bought a ton of Avast licenses for our company and rather than going round to every single machine to install it I'm hoping to use the Network Manager.. Thing is I'll be installing it on our only Domain Controller, which also hosts a lot of important data and services and can't really afford to be down at all.

So how stable is the current release? Are people running it on critical servers without issues? I'd like to hear any experiences from people, and also if anyone's running it on MySQL rather than MS SQL 2000. The server I want to use is running Windows Server 2003.

Thanks for any insight.

Mike

[Vlk]

Hi Noiz, this is a very good question actually. There're still some issues in ADNM but I'd say these are all related to the ADNM (remote management) stuff itself. I mean, the managed avast can do its job at the same quality as regular avast! Professional and the overall system stability shouldn't be compromised either. The worst thing you may experience is that there'll be communication problems between the management server and the clients.

One important thing is that the management server currently doesn't work on machines with MS Exchange installed. This is because of a port collision (AMS and Exchange unfortunately use the same port number ). This will be "fixed" in the next update.

In any case (especially if you have a larger number of licenses), I think it would be a good idea to do a demo install of the AMS and a couple of net clients on some test machines (or in Vmware, if you have it) and have it running for a while.


On a side note, we'll have an update fixing a number of communication errors in about 2 weeks from now.

Thanks
Vlk

[Noiz]

Thanks for the info. We're not running Exchange so that's not a problem.

I tried installing it on the target server just now but ran into an issue that it can't find our MySQL server (running from the same machine) to install the required database. Does this mean it's not compatible with MySQL at all? Or is there any way to bodge a workaround? I ask because we have several important databases running from MySQL and I'm guessing that running 2 SQL services on the same machine will be asking for trouble...

Once again, thanks for your help.

Mike

[Vlk]

Hi,

the answer is simple: you can't use it in conjuction with MySQL. Sorry but ADNM uses T-SQL Stored Procedures and is quite intimately bound to MS SQL. That's a decision we have made (it has its pros and cons).

BTW I don't know how about MySQL but MSDE is quite modest in terms of CPU/memory usage so running it on the same machine along with other "big" apps shouldn't be a problem. Alternatively, you may try to use a dedicated machine for the AMS (it wouldn't even have to be fast...).

Thanks
Vlk

[Noiz]

Right, I looked around on the on the ol' net and found that you can run MySQL and MSSQL in tandem with eachother, so I went ahead and installed the release that includes MSSQL. It finished without issue but I get the same errors when trying to run the service as this guy here:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=9122.0

One thing I noticed is that we both changed the default login name (and I'm guessing password) when asked for credentials for making the database. Could this have anything to do with the service not starting? Avoiding a re-install would be nice..

[Vlk]

Is the error message the same? I mean this:

Installer information: Cannot initialize data source, error 0x80040E4D


Also, you changed the "sa" account name in the setup wizard? Or just the password?

Thanks
Vlk

[Noiz]

Yeah the error is exactly the same.

I changed the "sa" account name to "avast" and I also changed the password. I get a growing feeling that was a bad idea!

[Noiz]

Ok, so I decided to uninstall / reinstall, but this time using the default options for the SQL username and password, BUT....

When I ran the uninstall, it asked me to reboot the server once it had finished.. I'd rather not reboot due to it being our only Domain Controller and I'm going to be installing the same software again anyway, so I chose not to. Now, I know some uninstall programs ask for a restart because they tell Windows to delete previously in-use files while its booting. Obviously I want to avoid this so it doesn't delete needed files...

So what I want to do is find the registry keys and / or files that tells Windows what to delete on boot and remove them accordingly. I've looked in the usual RunOnce and RunOnceEx registry points but they're all empty. Is there anywhere else I should be looking for such things?

Thanks muchly for any help, once again!

[Vlk]

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager, value called PendingFileRenameOperations.
Make also sure to delete the <Program Files>\ALWIL Software and <Program Files>\Microsoft SQL Server before restarting the installation.

Re the MSDE setup - it's ideal to change the password but to leave the username "sa". Otherwise, a random (strong) password will be used, which will remain unknown to you forever.

[Noiz]

Sweet, that worked

Thanks again for your support. Now I just gotta get all the workstations talking to it......