What is expected disk usage of Avast Mac Security

system · 2015-08-05T09:42:35.000Z

Hi,

I’ve realised today my mac’s main drive is running out of space, and as a result of looking in to that I noticed that Avast Mac Security (free version, I think they all are though…) is using quite a lot of space.

The app itself (/Applications/Avast.app) is only 4.7Mb, that is fine. The problem is the /Library/Application Support/Avast/ folder which is currently 12Gb.

Most of this usage is from what I assume are virus definition files - see below - lots of 0.25 Gb folders. I assume each of these is one virus definition download (ie. the directory name is a date + sequential number).

So:

Is this disk usage expected/typical?
Are these virus definitions folders, and if so are they stand alone, or are they incremental? If they are stand alone, how can I get Avast to delete the old definitions?

TIA,
Anthony

macbook:anthony anthony$ sudo du -mc /Library/Application\ Support/Avast/vps/defs/ | sort -n | grep -E “^[1]{3}”
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15070800
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15070801
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15070901
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15070902
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071000
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071001
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071100
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071101
254 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071201
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071300
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071301
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071400
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071401
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071500
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071501
255 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071604
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071700
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071803
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071804
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15071902
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072000
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072002
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072100
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072101
256 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072200
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072201
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072300
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072301
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072400
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072402
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072500
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072501
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072601
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072602
257 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072704
258 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072705
258 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072800
258 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15072900
258 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15073003
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15073101
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15073103
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15080100
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15080101
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15080201
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15080301
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15080400
259 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs//15080402
12050 /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs/
12050 total
macbook:anthony anthony$

0-9 ↩︎

tumic · 2015-08-05T11:28:22.000Z

Looks like there is some problem with deleting old virus definitions (VPS) on your machine. Usually you
should have only one VPS folder in /Library/Application Support/Avast/vps/defs/. During transition to
new VPS (VPS update), there may be temporary two VPS folders. The logic is that already running scans
use the old VPS and all new started scans use the new VPS. If there is a plenty of old VPS folders, most
probably there are some “deadlocked” scans blocking the VPS.

To find out, some investigation of the system is necessary. I would start with examinating the system log
file, maybe there is some info. In worst case attaching a debuger to the process would be required to see
what is going on, i.e. where the scan threads of the process are stuck.

As a solution I would delete all but the latest VPS (15080402) and kill (as root) the scan engine by

killall -9 com.avast.daemon

(will be immediately started again by launchd) or restart the computer.

system · 2015-08-13T12:14:18.000Z

I am experiencing the same problem. Looks like a bug. Also, it looks like it would be far too much trouble for me as a user to track down the bug. This is not something happening in an exceptional situation. Every virus definition file is retained, several per day.

Announcements