Well,
the latest engine (after three last minor bugfixes and one major HW fix on my G5) … seems to work 100% OK, or, at least, no bugs were found during the latest full test. Thus, it’s the right time to pass this new heart to the betatesters :).
INSTRUCTIONS FOR BETATESTERS:
installation:
0) if you don’t have avast! for Mac yet, get it here: http://files.avast.com/files/mac/avast.2.74.zip
quit both avast! and agent from avast’s menubar (if grayed out, uncheck persistent mode in Preferences first)
go to the /Applications/avast!.app/Contents/Resources and make a backup of the previous com.avast.MacAvast.MAD
place the new com.avast.MacAvast.MAD file there, and run avast! again
verification:
hover mouse above VPS 0812xx-x text in the left upper corner - Engine version: 0.0.80-beta must be shown there (not 0.0.68 nor 0.0.69)
task:
do the scan of your harddrive - the more files/stuff = the better. the scan must complete flawlessly, daemon shouldn’t die, neither the GUI.
in the case of any problem (futile cycling, crash), please let me immediately know (cimbal :at: avast.com). in the case of no problem, please let me immdiately know too :).
back to previous version:
apply the steps 1) to 4) again, just use the previously backed-up com.avast.MacAvast.MAD file (or, when lost, get one here: http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/md69.zip)
BONUS: Yes, this version doesn’t need ANY license and will work for 400 days since now (but can also accept any valid license at any time).
… and note, it’s NOT new version of avast! yet - just the beta (or, rather, a release candidate) of the core engine
Regards,
pc
Any help/report/suggestion will be very appreciated.
While running the avast! beta, something peculiar occurred. I have two internal drives on my Mac. One called Macintosh HD (the main drive) and the secondary called Data HD. I started the avast! scan on the Macintosh HD and after a few hours I noticed that it had completed but then continued on to scan the Data HD. You can only choose one drive at a time on the scan volume menu, so how did avast! decide to continue onto the secondary HD? Is this a new feature or a bug? ;-)
Thanks for the report, Charlie,
and because others might be interested too, here’s the reporting scenario for this class of peculiarities:
was the same true for the previous 0.0.68 OR 0.0.69 engine?
could you please try this shamanism?
a) - have avast! running, and from terminal, use ps -laxwww | grep MAD
b) - quit both avast and agent from menubar
c) - run the com.avast.MacAvast.MAD manually (=retype the command line got from a), don’t forget to ''-prefix all ‘!’ and spaces), but add two new switches: -m 0xffffffff -s ~/mad.log
d) run avast, and verify that the manual incarnation of daemon was accepted (use ps -laxwww | grep MAD, only one MAD should be running - that daemon spawned by you)
e) do the scan
f) quit both avast and agent from menubar
g) zip the mad.log in your home directory, and send it to me
I would say about 60-70 percent, The rest 42056 & 42110. For some reason, the menu option to save the scan is not working. (greyed out)
I’m not sure if this behavior has just started or if it has been broken. This is my Internal Boot Drive.
I did run two more scans on a couple of my external drives, both scans completed without any problems. Here is a little more info, if it helps:
[b]External 1 (Archive Drive): Scanned 334,893 items in 20,859 files, found 0 viruses and 1283 warnings. 183.82 GB
Err 13, 42056, 42110, 42125.
External 2 (Tiger Boot Volume): Scanned 1,379,894 items in 994,696 files, found 0 viruses and 519 warnings. 110.72 GB
Err 5, 13, 212, 42056, 42110, 42129.[/b]
Once again, the option to save the scan was unavailable. I am used to the Err 13 & 42056 codes, but the new codes (5, 212, 42129) concern me, I do not know what they actually mean, other than the error code information sheet from Zilog.
I have two more external drives to scan when I have the time.
I installed the software package for apple computer and I got these files (avast.pkg) and (com.avast.macavast.mad). I got an error code of 10660 and avast cannot be installed on my computer.
I appreciate all you have done. Could you please help me solve this problem so I can run avast! on my ibook G4 apple computer.
I need help to install vast! on my apple computer. Here is a look at my files on my computer. Why cann’t I install avast!?
Machine Model: iBook G4
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.07 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 256 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.8.5f0
Hallo Micko,
thanks for the report. All those warning will be hidden by default in the next version (because users were usually disturbed by them, although they have nothing to do with viruses/malware). Your numbers are related to access rights, password protected archives, decompression bombs and corrupted archives - that’s quite expectable. Number 5 is strange - might happen when scanning some file that disappeared while mapped, could you please click on the line with this error, and tell me, what file caused it (its full path, second line in the middle info-panel)?.
Win32:Small-HUF [trj] on win2000.hdd.0. (my Parallels windows 2000 hard drive) yet nothing finds it when I do PC virus checks in the Parallels virtual system
The rest were
1 err 16 and several 42110, 42125, 42128 and then the rest 13
Hallo, could you please specify, where the recursion occurs (you can look at the warnings pattern, what files repeated, and where they are located).
the recursion problem is strange, because we don’t enter symlink-loops, and thus, this can’t normally occur (and doesn’t occur on our testing machines).
this, in the fact, still blocks the release, because it’s a reported bud which can’t be reproduced. detailed logile could be very helpful here
(http://public.avast.com/~cimbal/beta.html hints are still valid for this beta, thus, could you please try to get, at least, the simplest of all logs - that daemon-log, enabled using -m 0xffffffff -s somefile switches to the daemon?)
Forgive me for asking what might seem to you what are stupid questions but here goes.
Where can i find the scan report files? I have run a single file scan since I ran the long overnight one. Does this mean I have overwritten the previous scan report or are they named by date/tiime/incremental no’s
What is the daemon?
(the simplest of all logs - that daemon-log, enabled using -m 0xffffffff -s somefile switches to the daemon?)
I don’t know what this means - tell me what to type and where and I will do it
I will help in any way I can but you will have to accept I am not a knowledgable MAC user
Hallo,
avast for mac = gui stuff + scanning daemon. the daemon is responsible for all the virus recognition, unpacking (and in the forthcomming version also for incremental updates), while the gui does the visualisation for the user (the daemon itself is driven using custom socket-level protocol).
that com.avast.MacAvast.MAD (which was changed in this beta-test), is the mentioned daemon itself. what you see in the gui after scan, is a scan report (usually a veeery narrow subset of the whole information flow, produced by the daemon). what we need, is a detailed logfile. usable logfiles can be produced by both daemon and gui. but, because such files tend to contain plenty of detailed low-level informations and because they tend to grow to hundreds of megabytes, their generation is disabled, by default. some tweaking is necessary here:
have avast! active (VPS 09xxxx-x should be written in the left upper corner)
run terminal (applications, utilities, terminal utility), and type here (one looong line with enter at the end): ps -laxwww|grep MAD|grep -v grep|tail -n 1|cut -d/ -f2-|(read a b c d e f g i j k l;echo DoQuit;read </dev/tty;/$a -v -m0xffffffff -s ~/avastlog $b “$c $d” $e “$f $g” $h $i $j $k $l)
if you enter the line correctly (each space is important), “DoQuit” will be printed. now, focus on avast!'s window, quit from menubar both avast and agent, then return to the terminal, and press enter. something like this should appear, otherwise go back to 1) and type the line again, correctly
run avast! again, and launch the scan. in the fact, you have spawned your own replacement of the daemon, and gui should adopt it without trying to run its own daemon instance. just have a look to your home directory - file avastlog should be there, and should grow. this is the file we want (compress it using zip or similar tool, to get reasonable size of the log, at least under ~100MB).
You will get rid of this logging later, simply by quitting both avast and daemon (your tweaked instance will be killed, and next time, gui will start its own normal version as usually).
regards,
pc
… i hope, it’s simplified enough to be understandable and reproducible
I ran the test and the log is 800mB (I ran it for about 4 hours before I stoped it). I compressed it and it is still 21mB. Your attach file facility doesn’t allow zip files nor files > 200kB. Can you email me with an email address that I can send it to (or is there another way?)
When I stopped it, it reported “Scanned 3578686 items in 2870578 files, found 2 viruses and 988 warnings”
The detail lines below said " 1021 items, 1002 unprocessed, 1021 shown"
Why does one say 988 and the other say 1021 ?
Note, the viruses are the 2 you asked me to create in my other thread - how do I get rid of them now?
