Avast Spamconf log files getting to 15Gbytes? How to clean it?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi,

In my laptop with 128GB SSD C: drive,
c:\ProgramData\Avast Software\Avast\Spamconf\log.txt has over 15.5GByte.
I tried to delete it and it wouldn’t let me do so as apparently some other process had it open.

Is there any way to clean this file up to reduce space?
I’m running Windows 7 SP1,
Avast Internet Security,
Program version:11.2.2261
Virus definition version: 160418-0
Numberof definitions: 3861678

Thx Kai

2

You need to disable the avast’s self-defence module > AvastUI > Settings > Troubleshooting. Don’t forget to enable it when you are done.

Note:

  1. I don’t use AIS, so I’m guessing this is some sort of Spam Configuration log.

  2. If it is some sort of Spam Configuration log, then deletion of the file would presumably lose and previous configurations.

  3. 15.5GBytes - massive for a log text file, have you made any changes to the log settings ?

3

Thanks,

I tried to disable Mail shield permanently, that’s ok, but still couldn’t do anything to the log file.
So I copied it to another drive and inspected the contents - mostly logs saying which version of spamconf it’s at etc.
in the end I booted up Windows in safe mode with command prompt and deleted the thing.
After reboot everything was fine and I saw the log.txt file come back to 200kb at first boot and continues to grow again, without me doing a thing (up to 233 kb in 5 minutes).
Apparently it is still running.

Somewhere when I inspected the content of this log file, it said “verbose = on”.
So I assume the log mode has been set to verbose. Any idea on changing to log mode to errors only? or something like that?

Thanks Kai

4

Reported to Avast let’s see what they have to say. Please be patient it may take some time.

5

You’re welcome.

I’m not entirely sure if this spamconf log is directly related to the Mail Shield, but the anti-spam feature and again I don’t know if this is linked to MS Outlook or not.

For sure I don’t believe any log should be set to Verbose by default as it would be collecting masses of data as you found.

I would love to be able to tell you where to set that verbose back to off, but I don’t know what function it is linked to, anti-spam or mail shield or the avast outlook plugin/add-on. But there doesn’t appear to be a verbose mode for the Mail Shield in the settings Report File and its log file is EmailShield.txt so it doesn’t look it is that.

6

Hey Kai33,

wow, that is truly enormous. Thanks for the catch, we are now tracking this issue under number AV-9911 in our bug tracking system. If you kill our self-defense module, you should be able to delete it.

Sorry for your trouble and thank you again,
B.

7

Hi Kai33,
just disable self-defense module, delete huge log.txt file and delete spamcatcher.conf also.
I will track down how you got this conf file in release build because it should be presented only in our internal builds.

Thanks for report,
pm

8

Thanks.

I confirm that after disabling self defence module, i’m able to delete that log.txxt file.

Thx Kai

9

This issue should have been fixed by vps update already.

Thanks,
pm

10

I am having the same issue the log file just keeps growing.

I am using Avast Premier
Version 12.1.2272
Release date 21/06/2016
Running Windows 10.

Is there anything I can do to keep log file size small.

11

Hi,
just delete file spamconf/spamcatcher.conf and the big log file in your avast data directory (usually c:\programdata\avast software\avast).

Thanks,
pm

12

Please fix this.

I am on version 12.3.2280 (build 12.3.3154.23) and this file gets ginormous. Got a SSD drive.

13

See reply #10