I’m almost finished setting up Avast in my computers! Bear with my just a little longer…
I have two of them running Windows 98 SE, in a small network.
The no. 1 has the broadband connection to the internet, Avast and WebShield running (explorer set manually to “localhost - port 12080”) . This is computer 192.168.10.1.
I wanted to share the broadband connection with computer no. 2 (192.168.10.2) and so I installed Analogx proxy on computer no. 1.
The lan has been set to 192.168.10.1 and port 6588 in computer no. 2 Explorer, as instructed by Analogx readme.
The problem is the following…
If I have the WebShield running on computer no. 1, I get a “Does not support loopback URL localhost:12080ÿ.com.br/” error on computer no. 2 browser.
If I revert the Explorer in computer no. 1 to its default configurations (disabling webshield), everything works perfectly!
It seems that the two proxies are not working well together…
I don’t know why it does not work together, but there is also the other way to share the web.
edit avast4.ini in c:\Alwil Software\avast4\data\avast4.ini
in the section [WebScanner] add the line
[WebScanner]
ListenOnLocalhostOnly=0
restart WebShield provider
Then you can configure the browser on the computer 2 to use proxy on 192.168.10.1, port 12080
It should work also the way how you originaly configured it. Perhaps the AnalogX is reading the configuration from Internet Explorer and forwards (or reject to forward) the request based on this config - and this might be turned off in it’s configuration, I guess.
If you still want to use AnalogX on the machine B (perhaps because you don’t want to see the virus warnings when the user from machine B tries to download one :P), do the following:
edit your avast4.ini as in my previous post - that is: add the line ListenOnLocalhostOnly=0 to the [WebScanner] section a restart WebShield
change your proxy configuration in IE settings on machine A to: 192.168.10.1, port 12080
change the proxy on machine B to: 192.168.10.1, port 6588
No. It just controls on what interfaces (IP addresses) will WebShield accept connections. This does not alter other functionality nor changes the way how requests are processed.
“Document contains no data” does not necessary mean it is an error - perhaps the link is down, or the server is too busy and the like.
Is this resproducible on some links or does this happens randomly?
Internet Explorer retries the connection up to 3 times, before it notifies you about the problem. WebShield also retries so together they migh connect even to a fairly overloaded server.
I’ve been using the above solution for a while now, and it’s raised an interesting security question…
I have Zone Alarm running on computer 1 (protecting the broadband connection) and I noticed that some programs on computer 2 are able to access the internet without being detected by it, simply by automatically using the Internet Explorer configuration (proxy on 192.168.10.1, port 12080).
It happens because the WebShield scanner acts as a proxy, and as it has already been given access rights in Zone Alarm on computer 1, no pop-ups asking for permission show up!
The main question is: couldn’t a malicious program on computer 2 (or even on computer 1!) take this same Internet Explorer configuration, use the WebShield as a proxy (bypassing Zone Alarm), and have free access to the internet, creating a dangerous security hole?
Lukor, do you know how to change/tweak this Internet Explorer setting? Sometimes I want it test more times but often, to wait a little more to give me an error (when, for instance, many pages are opened at the same time).
Leomlav, this is of course possible. If you open the proxy to outside world, you also need to restrict the access rights for it. If you have firewall installed only on computer 1, you have no way of detecting which process from computer 2 is connecting to the WebShield proxy. The only parameter you may limit is the IP ipaddress of the connecting pc (computer 2 in this case).
On the other hand, you may install zonealarm on computer2 too and there you can control connections to computer1 port 12080 in a standard way.
Seems to me like you would like one computer on the network to be able to detect what applications are running on some other computer and what more be able to limit their functionality : hmm. interresting.
I have been using the above setting successfully since reading Lukor’s post last year. It enabled another computer on my home network to share the internet connection of my main computer, by using WebShield as a proxy server instead of the incompatible AnalogX proxy. However, after upgrading from v4.7.844 to v4.7.871 recently, WebShield crashed on the server computer whenever the client computer attempted to access the web. This prevented web browsing from either computer.
I have deleted the ListenOnLocalhostOnly=0 setting from avast4.ini and now WebShield works fine again on the server, but the client computer can no longer access the web. >:(
Does anyone know if it is an intentional change that the ListenOnLocalhostOnly=0 setting is no longer supported? This is not mentioned in the Revision History for either v4.7.869 or 4.7.871.
I do not want to go back to the older Avast version, or to lose the protection of WebShield.
Lukor would know better, but I don’t think there were any options removed from the ini file.
Are there any unpXXXXX files in the \Data\Log folder? (with timestamps corresponding to WebShield crashes)
The exact error/crash message might also help…
Yes, there are several unpXXXXXXXXX.tmp files in the log folder. Most of them appear to be truncated and don’t give any useful information but one contains the following:
"------------
Fault source
E:\PROGRAM FILES\ALWIL SOFTWARE\AVAST4\ASHWEBSV.EXE caused an Illegal Instruction at location 00dc03f8."
This is followed by a lot of stuff about Crash Place, Register Content etc. - I could post or email the complete file if anyone wants to wade through it.
I didn’t note the exact wording of the error message but it was not specific - something like avast had a problem and needed to close, with an offer to send an error report. Afterwards the On-Access Control Panel said that the WebShield Provider was still running, but both Firefox and IE6 gave timeout errors. Outlook Express still downloaded email OK though the Internet Mail Provider.