I just recently installed avast! (convert from AVG) and one of the features that I found extremely interesting was the P2P protection. Unfortunately, I am an Azureus user and I was very disappointed to find that it is not one of the supported P2P applications. I have searched the forums and found multiple posts on the subject, almost all of which state that the reason it isn’t supported is because it is a java based application and there is no actual Azureus executable to monitor.
However, the current version of Azureus (2.5.0.4), while still a java application, does have its own executable/launcher, “Azureus.exe” that can be found in task manager as a running process. Azureus has been this way since version 2.3.0.6, released in November 2005.
So my question is this: if the problem with supporting Azureus was the lack of a single executable to monitor and that is no longer the situation, is there any other reason that support for it can’t be added now?
???
It has been some time since I last investigated azureus and its interactions with avast.
As far as I can see the avast P2P protection relies upon scanning the writes performed by the “named” P2P client. When all of the writes are being performed by the “named”.exe then it works.
In the case of azureus then azureus.exe is being described as a “launcher”. If, in fact, it is just that - a launcher - and the real application writes are still performed by javaw.exe rather than azureus.exe then the problem for avast has not changed.
If all of the files are now written by a process running under the name azureus.exe and not by a process running under the name javaw.exe then your question would have much to commend it.
I don’t pretend to be an expert, nor do I understand how Azureus works “under the hood”, but I have researched this a little bit further and found some interesting things.
When running Azureus, the only thing that appears as a running process is “Azureus.exe”. Neither java.exe or javaw.exe show up in task manager. The Azureus process does use a significant amount of memory and processor (gotta love Java apps), so it appears to be performing all of the file read/writes. The Azureus changelog was not much help in clarifying this, all it says is this: Under Windows, now runs via a launcher built by exe4j - taskmanager process is now “Azureus.exe”
So I checked the exe4j website and it says this: exe4j launches your Java application in such a way, that the exe4j executable and not java.exe or javaw.exe will appear in the task manager. In Windows XP, the task bar grouping will display the name of your executable and the associated icon, instead of the non-descript terminal icon and the string “javaw”.
It sounds like exe4j just makes your Java app “spoof” a name that will appear in task manager, while java.exe or javaw.exe does the real work. This just confuses the issue more.
So rather than waste my time Googling for more confusing answers, I left Azureus running while monitoring file read/writes on my system with Sysinternals File Monitor. this was the result (short version):
It would appear that Azureus.exe is indeed performing the actual write functions and should therefore now be compatible with avast’s P2P scanning (if I actually understand how the P2P scanning works).
;D