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Intercheck maxes out my CPUs

Kernos

Intercheck is using 98% of my %CPU for long periods of time. If I kill it, it comes back and climbs to 90%. Is there a way to fix this?

TIA, 

Bill

Sophos Anti-Virus

7.3.0.C

Threat detection engine: 3.20.2

Threat data: 4.66

Release date: June 6, 2011

Protects against 2623390 threats

OS 10.6.8

:1003241


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  • 0
    Agile wrote:

    Lemon, the issue you are describing with backups on Lion is not the same issue I am responding to in this thread, even if both result in one of the CPU cores reaching 100%.  The reason you can see more than 100% CPU usage is that the system has more than one CPU core; for a dual-core system, your max usage is 200% (100% on each core).  For a quad-core system, the max usage is 400%.

    This is definitely something you don't want to see happening on a laptop running on battery power (for obvious reasons), but Apple computers should be designed to easily handle CPUs running at 100% (or even 200%).  There should be no reason to fear for the health of your computer, although it will warm up and pump out more exhaust heat.  For the issue described in this thread, one of the cores will hit 100% for a few minutes before going back to normal levels.

    This is not destructive, although it will draw significantly more power while the CPU core is running at full capacity.

    Ok, thnx for the feedback! I'll now be a little less surpised when I see the 100 percent again. 

    :1003591
  • 0

    I'm seeing the same thing, but not caused by CPU usage. I'm running a 2 gig iMac 5,1 running 10.6.8 and the slowdown I see is because the disk usage is maxed out when Intercheck is only using about 14% of the CPU time. This slows the machine excessively. Is there any way to lower the priority of Intercheck's disk access request to make it a better neighbor to the other programs? I want my machine protected, but at the least I'd expect you to send a growl message to assure me that it's you slowing things, not the machine getting senile. At best, if you limited the access rate (perhaps throttle it back for systems that don't have several terrabytes to get through and four processors to do it with?) to 75% of what's available there would be a slowing, but not a slow-motion feel to the machine after bootup.

    :1004847
  • 0

    If you're getting that much disk activity, it sounds like you're out of memory and chewing through VM.

    Are you doing a manual scan or is this happening while on-access is enabled?

    It sounds to me like SAV is attempting to unarchive a very large archive and scan the contents in the background, and has possibly run out of physical memory while doing so.

    :1004855
  • 0

    Since downloading Sophos onto an early 2011 2GB MacAir, Snow Leopard; Activity Monitor shows Intercheck 115 MB real memory usage.  This is causing excessive page outs and beachballing.  No excessive CPU usage and no significant slow ups.  Need solution.  Will force quitting Intercheck cause any problems?

    :1004875
  • 0

    I've force-quit Intercheck without problems (it just reloads), but Intercheck generally handles memory well.  If it's using 115MB, that's not too far off standard levels (mine's at 94.4MB).  For a 2GB Mac, that shouldn't be very noticeable, and shouldn't be causing pageouts and beachballing.

    However, if you have archive scanning enabled for on-access scans, you may be experiencing this if you use a lot of java-based apps, or other apps that handle archives of large numbers of small files.

    :1004901
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    I was just using the system to access some websites that aren't graphics heavy. I was switching back and forth between the website and the document I was writing when the machine slowed to a crawl, and simply switching applicatios took excessive time, which is why I went to the system monitor to check on what was causing it. I have Word, Mail, Skype, and Firefox open but idle most of the time, so I don't know what has it so busy. According to the monitor there's 600 meg of RAM free. Certainly I wouldn't expect you to be churning up VM if memory was limited, in any case.

    In fact, tonight, after I shut down Firefox I noticed a lot of disc activity and found you were using between 45 and 95% of the processor time. That went on for several minutes but with the  there was nothing to scan, so far as I know, Skype was idle, as was Word.

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  • 0

    This definitely sounds like it was unpacking and scanning an archive.  Does this behaviour continue if you disable archive scanning in the On-Access prefs?

    :1004981
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    Why would intercheck be unpacking and scanning an archive if I didn't tell it to do so? 

    :1007263
  • 0
    telecat wrote:

    Why would intercheck be unpacking and scanning an archive if I didn't tell it to do so? 


    That depends on your definition of "tell it to do so" -- archive scanning is enabled by default.  This means that any time you do an on-demand scan on a folder that contains an archive, the archive will be unpacked and its contents scanned.  It also means that any time an archive file (which includes .jar files. .docx files, .dmg files and sparse image-based time machine backups among others) is accessed, the contents will be extracted and examined before the operation is allowed to complete.

    :1007267
  • 0

    Is here a way to disable intercheck completely? I want to completely disable. Otherwise, I'll have to dump sophos altogether.

    This situation SUCKS. You have done a poor job with this.

    :1007485