I’ve noticed in the last few days that Avast downloaded at least 100megabytes of new files inside the “setup” directory that we can find inside Avast path installation. (just to name a few all servers.def* files as well as three vps_* files). Why Avast uses a silent update to update installation files?
Please consider to notify users when Avast is updating some of its internal components (even if you’re updating setup files stored for subsequent repair operation).
I can’t consider this kind of update an “emergency update”. Do you agree?
Remember the Auto update includes - virus definitions and engine updates. But even so that shouldn’t come anywhere close to 100MB.
But a hundred mega bytes seems highly unusual (I would like to know how this was arrived at) as the full off-line installation file isn’t much bigger around 132MB.
The servers.def file (is just a list of avast servers used to balance server load) and vps_ files are generally integrated into the defs sub-folder. This is a collation of the old VPS update folder, streaming updates, merged into the new VPS sub folder. This new folder might well be of the order closer to 100MB, my last VPS update sub-folder is 88MB. That doesn’t mean that 88.8MB was downloaded.
Emergency updates generally happen very shortly after boot and you would probably be hard pressed to see what is going on that early.
Total size of that folder for me is 236Mb, used on disk is 180Mb.
But the updates are going back to as far as November 2013 on my system.
I very much doubt that avast downloaded 100Mb in the past few days.
It seems to me that it is just the total size of files in that folder on the OP’s system and that it contains “old” updates as well as the latest ones.
I can only think of 100Mb downloaded if someone installs a real old version of avast and update everything to the latest version.
I’m only looking at the one defs sub-folder, that which is highlighted 15913000, not the whole defs folder.
If you have updates going back to November 2013 there is something wrong - periodically avasts housekeeping it should remove old VPS sub-folders in the defs folder.
I find it a bit strange that your size on disk is actually smaller than the reported size - in virtually all instances my size on disk is larger. I don’t know what sector size is but mine is the smallest allowed for ntfs on XP 512 bytes and a cluster size of 4KB.
I can assure to all of you that the files I cited on the first post has been updated on my system silently…it’s easy as observing the date of these files: 30/01/2015…and the same change has happened on my laptop with Windows 7 as well as my desktop with Windows 8.1. And I didn’t do any repair or reinstall so far…so it’s clear that avast updated those files…just one time, no more. I’m aware that virus definition are updated in the defs folder as well…i’m also aware that virus defs are different in size (few kb for streaming updates, some megs for daily defs)…but this is not the case.
I’m inside the C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\setup path and I’ve got:
vps_32-f56.vpx with “last modified date” 30/01/2015 (dd/mm/yyyy) 64069KB
vps_win32-f66.vpx with “last modified date” 30/01/2015 (dd/mm/yyyy) 12140KB
jrog2-c97.vpx with “last modified date” 30/01/2015 (dd/mm/yyyy) 3331kb
and so on…
They silently injected a new baseline for virus definition in the setup directory to avoid downloading tons of incremental update after a repeair installation. I doubt they did these with a definition update: I suppose that a definition update places files only in the “defs” subdirectory, not elsewhere. To me this is more like a a sort of emergency update that can replace any kind of file…am I right? Feel free to correct me…i just want to understand. I trust Avast and I’m sure they need to act in that way to guarantee the components to stay up to date.
As I said the emergency updates generally happen shortly after boot and they usually update ‘some’ files with a fix so that a program update isn’t required. They don’t update everything only those files that have been modified to resolve a bug, etc.
I can’t see that coming anywhere close to 100MB if you monitor the task manager the AvastEmUpdate.exe and another uniquely name executable (created by that file) aren’t in the task manager display for very long.
There may be times if the virus definitions are well out of date that it isn’t feasible to do an incremental update the full database would be downloaded. Typically this would happen if you dis a reinstall using an old setup file, but that certainly isn’t the case given what you have said. So I’m at a loss as to what happened on your system/s as I haven’t experienced this.
The .vpx files are as far as I’m aware used for verification (data corruption check), which I suspect after a VPS update, etc. .vpx can be created internally.
I haven’t done a repair, reinstall or had an emergency update since 27/01/2015 and I have all of those files with that date 31/01/2015. In all I have 16 files with that date in the setup folder. This coincides with the creation of the defs sub-folder for VPS update 15013000 in my previous image attachment Reply #1.
If you have updates going back to November 2013 there is something wrong - periodically avasts housekeeping it should remove old VPS sub-folders in the defs folder.
You’ve got several files marked 30/01/2015 too Eddy! I think that the best solution is to wait for an Avast developer explaination. I’m quite sure they need to update the defs baseline to avoid loading tons of incremental updates after a repair or a full install. They did it silently.
These files are source installation and virus database packages. When VPS updates, only differences are downloaded and then merged with these packages to make it a new version of program or VPS. That way, you can download far less data (under 1 % of full package size). VPS, in its full, has well over 100 MB. Other bigger files are related to the program itself and doesn’t change that much (program updates). However, there is one new option in the UI “to download program update packages automatically and wait for user to approve the update”.
