AVAST on Toshiba Thrive tablet looks good (but have questions)

[cooby]

Toshiba Thrive AT105/16 (Uses Wi-Fi)
Rooted and this Android 3.2 ROM (very close to the stock ROM):
http://www.thriveforums.org/forum/dalepl/5071-rom-dalenet-htk55d-31-5-0002-oom-rooted-rom-us-hc-3-2-1-a.html

Avast mobile beta v 1.0.1006 is on. It's so great to see the Avast shortcut and the little icon.

Initial observations and questions:
1. You forgot to tell to reboot after installation, so all it did was telling me "scanning apps" and for 10min 0%
2. Fast scan with an option to enable disable the SD card scan is great.
2a. But how it reached 125% is beyond me.
2b. It is not clear to me WHAT SD card. Their internal memory is called SD card. Under Android 3.1, external SD card was under the SD card. In Android 3.2 it finally got a clearer name, SDcard2 (and has to have read & write priviliges). Perhaps Avast could either specify the exact path or clarify if it's the external card being scanned.
2c. USB flash (in android 3.2 it's called usb storage-x where x=0, 1,2,3 for harddrives etc) - I think Avast does not see it
3. Will Avast see some windows malware that an android appplication or browsing may pick up, and therefore be able to infect Windows which so easily connects to the Thrive
4. No help file. I have no idea what to do with those 3 little icons on the firewall tab. Avast got superuser access.

Just in case it's important what state this tablet was when I put in Avast:
I uninstalled previous AV, AdFree, Permissions denied and Fix permissions, and aSpotCat to eliminate possible conflicts/overlap.
Whether these are clean uninstallations I don't really know.
I stopped OS Monitor from running at startup for now. Just in case.

(Edited thread title 2x)

[Vicenteriv]

Hello,
As far as I know, supported versions are 2.1-2.3, not including tablets nor ICS phones, but seems to work in both cases though.
Anyways, as it's not supported, I guess the Avast! Team didn't think of those situations that only affect a Tablet like the Thrive, so it's not rare for me to see such issues

[cooby]

I know it's unofficial and not supported.
But according to post#18 by hayc59, and post#21 by vlk,indicates is ok to try and report, which I've done
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=313614

[Filip Havlicek]

That is correct, reports even from unsupported devices are very valuable and useful for us, even though we might not focus on fixing them right now if the problems look too tablet/ICS specific. So thanks for the report!

Filip

[Vicenteriv]

My intentions weren't to tell him to not to report but to be patient or something like that, I know that he HAS to report, just saying he shouldn't be surprised.
Sorry for my intromision Just trying to be of help.

[cooby]

Could somebody, please, answer me at least about item #4 in my original post. TIA.

[Filip Havlicek]

4. No help file. I have no idea what to do with those 3 little icons on the firewall tab. Avast got superuser access.

Selecting an icon means blocking the application access when respective conditions are met.

The icons mean:
1) Wi-Fi connection
2) Mobile connection
3) Roaming

[cooby]

Thank you very much. That's what I was beginning to think. Since everything works nice and smooth unimpeded by any blocks which I plan to do now

So I'd like to propose two small changes:
1. Checkmark normally means allow. How about change it to a big red X over the icon to tell users like me that application is being blocked.
2. During the installation, should Avast detect that a device is or is not a phone, and automatically disable the Mobile and Roaming options. I don't know what the implication of this proposal would be for people who use "tethering" which, I believe, allows them to use to phone on the Thrive and similar Wi-Fi only tablets.

[Filip Havlicek]

1. Checkmark normally means allow. How about change it to a big red X over the icon to tell users like me that application is being blocked.

Since the first line in the application list says "Block All Apps", it is pretty obvious that by checking an icon, you want to block stuff (at least it's obvious to me .

2. During the installation, should Avast detect that a device is or is not a phone, and automatically disable the Mobile and Roaming options. I don't know what the implication of this proposal would be for people who use "tethering" which, I believe, allows them to use to phone on the Thrive and similar Wi-Fi only tablets.

Since there are tablets running on 2.x versions of Android and there are tablets with SIM card support, I don't see a fast and easy way to determine which options should be hidden right now (this doesn't mean there isn't one of course).

Filip

[cooby]

#2 - ok

#1 - now I'm confused. Yes, there is a Block All first line. Its 3 icons are identical to the applications. Not being sure what it all means, I tapped the Block all line. It did nothing. I suppose to Block all I should have done that checkmark you mentioned. So I will try that. But I think it is confusiing. Perhaps you could add a line of help to tell what to click to block or allow.

Thanks for answering

[Filip Havlicek]

I think the other way around would be confusing for the people that understand the current concept I don't think there is an easy way out of this.

I also think that sooner or later there will be some kind of FAQ or guide that will explain how to use certain features of the product and I hope it will solve all the confusion there is

Filip

[cooby]

OK, Filip.
I think I finally see how it works.
Whether it's a feature or a bug, I cannot possibly tell, too new to the android things.
Selection of things I did, in chronological order:

1. I clicked the Wi-Fi icon in Block All, tried gmail, two browsers, market app, maps - they all happily ran and delivered new content perfectly. So that didn't work.
2. I unclicked Block All, and just clicked the icon for gmail, maps, one browser - they all worked perfectly, not on cached data, so clearly something is wrong.
3. I enabled the apps I just disabled in item 2, so they'd be in their default state (unchecked).
4. I clicked the icon under Block all once more
5. I rebooted. Success: maps, gmail, browser, market can't connect.
7. I repeated step 4 and 5 for few individual applications.  Talking Tom and some other game can't connect for some related apps download because market won't connect. Ditto mail and others. Success. No going out to the web.
8. GOT IT. You have to reboot for the permissions to take effect. That maybe obvious to your android experts. Not obvious to a user like me.

Regarding your presentation. Let's agree to disagree on my idea of red X.
But one help line on that enormous, empty screen, would really, really help, especially the REBOOT thing.

I'm so happy I got Avast on board of this tablet!

[Filip Havlicek]

Hi cooby,

I have just been told that stock ROM doesn't need a restart to apply the changes, it seems to be a bug (or a feature) of your ROM. We do not officially support custom ROMs so we won't consider that as a bug on our side, but I'm glad it's working

Filip

[cooby]

Filip,
That may well be under android under 3.2 and phones. Current android 3.2 required no-root due to google's DRM, AFAIK. Other tablets are affected by this as well.

Remember, I'm reporting on one tablet, android 3.2. In stock ROM permissions cannot be changed because that needs root.
My ROM looks custom. Because it added root rights. Other small changes had to do with smoother memory management and allowing write access to the SD card, which also was killed by the google DRM rights. It's very close to stock. Read the description in the link in my first post.

Added later:
From the creator of this rooted ROM
http://www.thriveforums.org/forum/toshiba-thrive-general-discussions/6025-ok-what-i-gather.html

All my ROMs are actually stock with only minor changes. Most of the pre-installed apps are moved to the user installed area. The OOM Rooted ROMs are the smoothest. I have optimized the out of memory settings and changed the app priorities to allow the screen scrolls to be smoother.

(end of the added section)


Also see this link, where reboot is mentioned:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/control-permissions-applications-permissions-denied-android/
and run this and watch how Permissions Denied has to reboot:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.stericson.permissions&hl=en

You must reboot before these changes take place and be aware that denying an app a permission that it is requesting may result in the app Force Closing.

I'm not saying it's a bug. But a line about "you must now reboot" would be helpful in the FIREWALL section. Otherwise changing those icons might give one a false sense of security, and puzzlement in my case

[cooby]

This thread about ROMS, reply #4 was helpful - thanks. Now I understand why you mentioned Custom ROMs here.
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=90315.0

In addition to stuff I mentioned in the first post, the only thing I wish for islogs like in windows. Logs mentioned here as well:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=90275.0

That said, I updated to 1.0.1069  and it is working nicely here since yesterday. VDF has 296 definitions, websites look checked, files and apps are scanned as they come in, no battery drain, good stuff so far.