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Norton AntiVirus causing issues with temp files resulting in system freezes
In addition to the bevy of other issues caused by the AutoProtect component of Symantec's Norton AntiVirus under Mac OS X 10.4.x, readers are beginning to report an issue with apparent corruption of Mac OS X temp files that can result in spiking processor usage and complete system unresponsiveness.
One MacFixIt reader, Tim, writes:
"My three month old machine runs a few hours using Safari (dialup, Earthlink) then either stalls on loading web pages or goes kernel panic with CPU over 170 degrees F. We tried reinstalling OS X with archive, then reinstall OS X with partition at suggestion of Apple factory techs. The problem remains.
"I used the command: /sbin/fsck -fy Disk Repair and find many dozens or more of similar error messages:
- Checking Catalog File, incorrect size for file temp5383471 it should be 0 instead of 401831"
"I flush these out and the machine is good for another five or six hours, then these messages pile up again and the system locks up."
We later followed up with the reader, asking him to temporarily disable Norton AntiVirus and check for persistence of the issue. In his case, AntiVirus indeed turned out to be the culprit.
Tim adds:
"I tried some testing, wheel mouse and Apple mouse, NAV 10.0 on/off, looks like Norton Anti-Virus 10.0 was mucking up the Temp Files. If I survive a few days lockup-free then that should prove the point."
The easiest way to get around this problem is to simply disable Norton AntiVirus' AutoProtect component from within the application's preferences, or completely uninstall AntiVirus via these instructions.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Resources
Mac should get some good factual information from an unbiased source (are
they trying to sell me something? / are they paranoid? etc). Many people say:
"Yeh, I know all that but I want to be protected because one day there will
certainly be a Mac virus". Think again. You are not protected until details of a
virus appear in the data file your AV app uses. Until then you have as much
protection (i.e NONE) as I have without any AV app. When a Mac virus is
reported you will have to download the updated data file and so will I plus
downloading an AV app (BTW, on available evidence I wd choose ClamXav) ? a
difference of a few minutes. I suggest that skeptics, the unconvinced and
those who feel fearful without an AV app running start by reading:
Macs, viruses, and anti-virus software
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Andreas
iMac 800, OS 10.4.2
I pulled NORTON off my System a year ago, and havent looked back;
Things operate much smoother;
Dont fall for the "Mac has no viri written right now because it isnt very popular" nonsense;
Mac is built tough; and besides for the odd virus that MIGHT someday get thru-I doubt NORTON will be able to stop it until after the fact;
I have to disagree and here is why. In our Adv. Agency we are 95% Mac and all have Norton AntiVirus running and I may add with no problems, from old Macs to new G5's. We deal with many Internation Clients and I can tell you that many times we get Norton Warnings about a virus that comes from them! Yes while it will not do our machine any harm, we could accidently send it on to another client without knowing but we don't, we remove it, we notify the client who on many occasions and for whatever reason thanks us... for this alone it is worth it. Our client while not happy about having Virus's ... noticed that we cared enough to tell them and for them to take the proper actions to correct it. Over the years... it has been getting better.
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SCH
those files, it gets worse. When this happened to me, I ran repair permissions,
Disk repair(from second drive), then DiskWarrior and the problem went away. I
still have Norton there.
To be fair, I don't use auto protect. I have Norton scan the drives once a week.
-Allan
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Thanks,
Allan Marcus
Allan,
You are not experiencing the problem listed because you have already disabled
the Auto-Protect, which apparently is the culprit. I personally don't use Norton
products...haven't since OS 8. After reading about all the problems with Norton,
it seems to cause much more trouble. Since they killed off Utilities for Mac, it
seems they don't really care about putting a good effort into making Anti-Virus
a strong product for OS X.
remember. This may have to do with the complexity of the OS or
the sophistication of the intruders Norton Anti-Virus scans for but,
regardless, it causes as many problems as it solves. If you have good work
habits there are ways to use anti-virus programs without messing up your
system, but you have to remember to run the scans manually on a regular
basis; this includes routinely downloading virus definition updates.
That being said, Symantec should get its own house in order before hectoring
Mac users about security. They have precious little credibility left as it is,
particularly after abandoning support and development of Norton Utilities
beyond OS X 10.3.9. When they have a reliable product, then they can warn
us about the dangers of not using it.
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Don't anthropomorphize computers.
They hate that.
Most recently, there have been numerous reports on newsgroups about Microsoft Office applications being unable to save to any kind of network share when Auto-protect is running. It is surmised that Auto-protect spends so much time analyzing the temp file i/o stream that the server times out and the write action is denied. This generates a generic server error code that Office interprets as a file permissions or naming error.
The workaround is to make the save location a "safe zone"[sic] in the Auto-Protect preferences or just turn off Auto-protect altogether. This is particularly depressing given the fact that enterprise users are those who are most likely to be using (a) network shares, (b) Microsoft Office and (c) Virus protection software (as of policy). Oh the irony that a virus protection program can carry out a Denial of Service attack on those it is purporting to protect.
I think I heard someone say once that, on the mac, the Virus protection software is the Virus.
- by iGreg February 20, 2006 10:09 AM PST
- I have been looking at this for awhile now, & it seems to me that even if this
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(8 Comments)issue persists to this day (which I do not know if it does) it can be prevented
by limiting SafeZones to be scanned to a few folders. Change default
AutoProtect settings to scan only downloads folders, such as for mail and
perhaps another one you create as default downloads folder for everything
else. Also, make sure compressed archives are not scanned in both NAV main
app and in AutoProtect preferences. Scanning archives when downloaded is
unnecessary, when you download an archive to a downloads folder scanned
by Autoprotect I believe the file will be scanned by AutoProtect after it's
uncompressed (as long as the folder is a SafeZone). Scanning compressed
archives if you manually scan the whole drive is also unnecessary, simply use
the NAV contextual menu to scan the files after they are uncompressed.
Scanning compressed archives have always been problematic with NAV, from
the classic OS to the present.
It seems that you can avoid most of the issues with NAV that pop up regularly
by changing AutoProtect default settings. NAV 10 default is too make the
whole hard drive a SafeZone, & I have always thought that was overkill and
would probably lead to some issues. So, if you use NAV, then fine tune its
settings to truly limit what AutoProtect covers and run a manual scan of the
whole drive now and then.
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iMac G5, 17", 1.8 GHz, 1GB RAM
PowerBook G4, 12", 1.5 GHz, 768 MB RAM
Both OS 10.4.5