Slow-down problem?

[mity]

Greetings to the community,

although the avast! for mac has been received quite well, of course we hear some users of avast! for Mac complain about slowing down their Mac. To cope with the issue, we need to collect some additional data. So please help us to smooth the issue out and make the product even better! If your mac is much slower after installing avast! for Mac, you can help us by following these instructions:

• Download this special build: http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/avast-37075.dmg
• Update manually to it:
  • Drag the avast!.app from the DMG to /Applications.
  • If Finder warns you, avast!.app already exists in /Applications, choose "Replace".
  • Start avast! application. It will offer you update, so follow its instructions.
• Use your Mac normally, especially the use cases when you see the biggest slow down.

This build of avast! for Mac will log information about filesystem shield activity into the file /var/log/avastfileshield.log. After some time of work with your Mac, provide this file to us by replying to this post. Please try also to include information about time(s) when you see the biggest slow downs, what HW do you have etc. More info we have, more likely we will fix it sooner.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Mity

P.S. You don't need to do anything to switch back to normal version. After releasing next normal program update, this version will automatically update to it and delete the bloated log file.

[innov8ion]

Mid 2011, 13" Macbook Air running OS X 10.7.4.

This log was active for approximately 5-10 minutes. During which, I browsed via the most recent versions of Safari and Chrome Beta. There was no slowness in Safari however  there was noticeable slowness via Chrome. Again, the browser slowness only occurs after entering URL's in the Omnibox. When I say slow, I mean it takes about 5-10 seconds to even start loading up a website. Alternatively, I can click on links and almost immediately bring up web pages.

Your max attachment size is too small for this 5-10 minute log. I've uploaded it here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bx9fmyb1tZgUdTlMeHNObldpNG8

Does this help?

[sejtam]

One reason for great slowness on my mac I have just found:

When I move many emails between folders (I keep mails in IMAP backup folders, one per month,
so often move them there). then Thunderbord will read those folders in the background
(esp when new mails have appeared in them). That can push the Avast CPU to >100% and
make the whole system sluggish, because of course Avast will scan each such email again)..

It would be good if such scanning for non-interactive access to mail-folders
could be run at a lower priority. I understand that identifying which of the Thunderbird IMAP accesses
is of this kind will be hard.

I think it would be good if Avast could design a proper Thunderbird plug-in/add-in/extension
that scans mails, rather than hooking in between the IMAP connection...

Such an extension could then (hopefully)

a) avoid the need to tinker with the IMAP settings/the need to set the IMAP connections to
   non-ssl in the first place
b) distinguish between interactive access to mailboxes (ie the email I am just reading, whether
   from INBOX or another folder)  and background/sync accesses that could run at a lower priority

c) interactive scanning of attachments

d) delay scanning until after encrypted emails (PGP/GPG/EnigMail, etc) are decrypted, in case
   there is a virus in them. hijacking the IMAP connection for scanning does not allow this.

[tumic]

One reason for great slowness on my mac I have just found:

When I move many emails between folders (I keep mails in IMAP backup folders, one per month,
so often move them there). then Thunderbord will read those folders in the background
(esp when new mails have appeared in them). That can push the Avast CPU to >100% and
make the whole system sluggish, because of course Avast will scan each such email again)..

It would be good if such scanning for non-interactive access to mail-folders
could be run at a lower priority. I understand that identifying which of the Thunderbird IMAP accesses
is of this kind will be hard.

This slowdown is caused by the fileshield, not the mailshield. You can avoid it by adding the Thunderbird
storage to the exclude paths in the preferences.

I think it would be good if Avast could design a proper Thunderbird plug-in/add-in/extension
that scans mails, rather than hooking in between the IMAP connection...

Such an extension could then (hopefully)

a) avoid the need to tinker with the IMAP settings/the need to set the IMAP connections to
   non-ssl in the first place
b) distinguish between interactive access to mailboxes (ie the email I am just reading, whether
   from INBOX or another folder)  and background/sync accesses that could run at a lower priority

c) interactive scanning of attachments

d) delay scanning until after encrypted emails (PGP/GPG/EnigMail, etc) are decrypted, in case
   there is a virus in them. hijacking the IMAP connection for scanning does not allow this.

The problem with separate mail client plugins is, that you need a separate one for every mail client, where some clients even do not support plugins at all.

[REDACTED]

What about a version for PC? Since I installed the last major version, performance has been very poor.

Thanks,
Rob

[mity]

What about a version for PC? Since I installed the last major version, performance has been very poor.

Thanks,
Rob

Sorry, this forum is dedicated to Mac version only. For Windows version, go to this forum: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2.0

Regards,
Mity

[mity]

Mid 2011, 13" Macbook Air running OS X 10.7.4.

This log was active for approximately 5-10 minutes. During which, I browsed via the most recent versions of Safari and Chrome Beta. There was no slowness in Safari however  there was noticeable slowness via Chrome. Again, the browser slowness only occurs after entering URL's in the Omnibox. When I say slow, I mean it takes about 5-10 seconds to even start loading up a website. Alternatively, I can click on links and almost immediately bring up web pages.

Your max attachment size is too small for this 5-10 minute log. I've uploaded it here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bx9fmyb1tZgUdTlMeHNObldpNG8

Does this help?

Based on the information from the log I have created an experimantal build:
http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/avast-37116b.dmg

We were unable to reproduce your problem (on our machines the Chrome cache files never growed so much whatever we tried), so we are not sure it really helps. Can you please test this build on your machine?

Thanks for your help.
Mity

[morgoth6]

To be honest I suffer from the same problem on my machine (MacBook Pro Late 2010) the slowdown was not noticeable when normaly using machine, but it was highly visible in Chrome browser (when opening new tab or after entering address sometimes it takes 10-15 seconds for page to start loading with 99% CPU usage from Avast) I did not try the test previously test build as this is work machine and I can not broke anything here, but I tired this test version and I must say it's definitly better (just upgraded Avast, no reboot or relogin) as I can not see any slowdown in Chrome. Will give some more detailed info after one or two days.

[mity]

Thnaks for the feedback.

Regards,
Mity

[SynAckAck]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Avast seems to proxy Web and Email traffic (assuming that's enabled)

One of the things that I notices is opscd becoming quite taxed after installation of Avast. Using Outlook/SSL to company Exchange server, along with general web browsing was sluggish and the application process would become unresponsive.

Disabling Avast would seem to make the problem go away, so immediately blame that.

However, after a bit of inspection I found two other shims in my case that caused issues.

1] opscd, the CRL database in /private/var/db/crls had some entries with dead TTL that Avast simply didn't seem to know what to do with. Therefore opscd would see the TTL expired and would try to interogate a CA, which Avast would intercept and simply cause a race condition (because the TTL was dead, invalid, bad hash, etc)

If you're slow, trying making a backup of /private/var/db/crls, and then remove ALL of the entries (not just the .db entries)
 (sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/crls/* && sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/crls/.fl*)

2] Cisco Anyconnect, or Legacy Cisco VPN client. In OSX 10.6 or better, where users upgraded from Leopard to Lion. Artifacts from previous 32 bit apps may hang around. One of which is the VPNd process shim from Cisco. Assuming you have/had this installed, I would suggest you uninstall by running the Cisco uninstall script. (sudo /opt/cisco/vpn/bin/vpn_uninstall.sh)

As always, make a backup before you make these changes/execute at your own risk/etc.

If you're web related performance issues with Avast,  hope this helps point some people in the right direction.


- Tom

[kevpan815]

Thank you for posting that link. Although I was not having slow down problems, I was having software compatibility problems with the released version of Avast and my Beta Version of Mac OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4! That link fixed my problem!

[nohairdave]

See http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=97074.0

This solved my problem, but may not be applicable to everyone

[sg-1]

I also have the SlowDown problem with my MBA 2012. (13" 8gb 128gb toshiba ssd).
The responsible module is the file system protection ("Dateisystemschutz").

My ssd Speed with the module on: write ca. 250MB/s read: ca. 30MB/s !!
My ssd Speed with the module off: write ca. 250MB/s read: ca 400+ MB/s !!

program version 7.0 (37431)

[iphone900]

I also have the SlowDown problem with my MBA 2012. (13" 8gb 128gb toshiba ssd).
The responsible module is the file system protection ("Dateisystemschutz").

My ssd Speed with the module on: write ca. 250MB/s read: ca. 30MB/s !!
My ssd Speed with the module off: write ca. 250MB/s read: ca 400+ MB/s !!

program version 7.0 (37431)

Same problem!
mac osx 10.7.5
samsung 830 SSD 4 Gb RAM

avast version 7 (37667)

[mcgroarty]

I can reproduce this fully. Excluding one path fixes it:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=98573.msg943066#msg943066