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Unable to complete login after reboot

mdoorkeeper

Hi,

I installed Sophos Anti-virus for Mac Home Edition yesterday.  Install went as expected.  I ran a custom scan on a small micro SD to try it out and it went well, so I ran a full system scan.  That went faster than expected - MUCH faster than ClamXav, so I thought, "I like this".  BUT!!!! When I went to restart my computer today, I was unable to login to my admin account.  The whole computer would hang and become completely unresponsive to any interface just after launching Finder.  I had to force shutdown using the manual button in the top right corner.  I then ran "Applejack", (which cleaned a HUGE cache file), and rebooted.  Same result, ie; hang after Finder launch.  Sooo, I forced shutdown again, rebooted in Safe mode, and uninstalled Sophos AV.  

It has been suggested on another forum that the problem is that my computer was not connected to the internet at the time I restarted.  My computer is a Macbook and I usually use it in a mobile environment, so I'm almost never connected to the internet when I reboot.

I like the product.  I've not had the slowdown issues I see posted here, in fact I was impressed by how fast it worked and how little CPU it used while running in the background, but until I can restart without problems, I'm afraid it will stay uninstalled.

FYI:  My computer is an '08 Macbook 13" aluminum with 4gb RAM, running OS X 10.6.4

:1000262


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  • 0

    … Now in System Profiler: instead of recognisable details for the device, and details of the four volumes, I simply see: 

    TUSB6250 Boot Device:

      … 

      Current Available (mA): 500

      Current Required (mA): Unknown (Device has not been configured)

    This might be pure coincidence …

    Sigh of relief, hopefully nothing more than coincidence. I disconnected USB, connected FireWire 800, the spin-up was audibly better and the four volumes mounted. For peace of mind I have reinstalled firmware and am running Disk Utility. 

    False alarm (?) over, back to the bug …

    :1000715
  • 0
    grahamperrin wrote:

    … trying to pinpoint the stage at which the bug bites, but the stage does vary significantly …

    … a few hunches of factors that contribute to the bug …

    A question for Sophos

    Shot in the dark.

    If in the menu bar the shield wishes to animate itself very soon after the user logs in:

    1. What does Sophos require, from the OS, to achieve the animation?
    2. If those requirements are not fulfilled in good time — if the animation can not begin — how does Sophos respond?
    Side note: reading a topic that's unrelated, I begin to wonder how all parts of the GUI of Sophos behave when loads/durations are unusually great. 
    :1000829
  • 0
    grahamperrin wrote:

    … a few hunches of factors that contribute to the bug, the steps to reproduce the bug … 

    A question for people who have been bitten by this bug

    A long shot. 

    System Preferences… | Security | General

    Is your virtual memory (a) normal, or (b) secure?

    :1000831
  • 0

    1) Startup Objects are: iTunes Helper, Better TouchTool Rowmote Helper.

    2) sorry, but i cant get anything out of my console because i am note qualified :P i tried a feew search strings but nothing came up but i am sure its just because i cant get around the console.

    :1000921
  • 0

    According to Sophos Japan, in case of using FileVault, this issue is caused by MacOSX kernel. By their explanation to me, I understood as follows.



    This issue is caused in case that the number of "Startup Items" is more than the number of on-access thread of Sophos Antivirus. If the number of "Startup Items" is less than the on-access thread, the MacOSX kernel will be deadlock.

    Tentative handling is the operation of following command in Terminal application.

    sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.sophos.sav WorkerThreads -int 15

    By this option, the number of on-acccess thread of Sophos Antivirus will be increased.
    (Default 4 thread --> 15 thread)
    This influence is the increase of memory use.

    :1000981
  • 0

    As Kimipooh points out, there is a known issue with File Vault and SAV for Mac. Two small corrections - the commands to reset the number of worker threads in the On-access scanner are:

    sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.sophos.sav WorkerThreads -int 15

    sudo launchctl stop -b com.sophos.intercheck

    The service needs to be restarted through Launchd (rather than through the GUI for example) in order for this setting to take effect. In addition, the On-access scanner uses at least 13 threads in total, of which 10 are used by default exclusively for scanning any read or access requests happening on the system. 

    Hope that helps,

    David

    :1000995
  • 0

    well dont know if i should try this, i rather hope that SAV will issue a new fixes version.

    by the way on your SAV site i don´t see any information about what VERSION exactly is the current one and if there are new versions what changed.

    Would be nice because right know i cant figure out if you have a new version that fixed this issue.

    :1001003
  • 0

    Re Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X release notes for version 4.9.12 (RTF, 2008):

    Known problems with this version

    • (DEF 19925) On OS X 10.5.x with FileVault enabled, the on-access scanner can cause deadlocks.

    • how was DEF 19925 resolved?
    1. deadlocks in general 
    2. deadlocks following login
    — both of which were associated with SAV on-access scanning in 2008. 
     
     
    > Turning off Sophos (not just the moving of files but also active scanning)
    > solved the problem
     
     
    > turn off Sophos active scanning "on access"
     
    please note that for me, in multiple tests, disabling on-access scanning was not a reliable workaround. 
    :1001005
  • 0
    OleZimmer wrote:

    … what VERSION exactly is the current one … 

    Please see 

    Current versions of Sophos products 

    … what changed.

    Would be nice because right know i cant figure out if you have a new version that fixed this issue.

    Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X release notes 

    (not to be confused with a different document with the same title 

    Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X release notes) 

    offers some Information from previous versions but that information is very limited, nothing earlier than August 2010.

    Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac OS X: how to upgrade to version 7 was created in April 2009 so for version 7.x there seems to be a gap, in available release notes, of around fifteen months. 

    :1001011
  • 0

    OK, so if I understand you and Kimipooh correctly, I must set the "WorkerThreads" to a number greater than my login items. Yes?

    I'm a bit leery about trying to drive my computer with Terminal as I don't really know what I'm doing.  I don't speak UNIX, but I do know that "sudo", if used incorrectly, can REALLY **bleep** things up, big time.  The few times I've ventured there, I was essentially just following step-by-step directions with no real knowledge of just what I was telling my computer to do, then crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.  Also, I have no idea how to restart the service through Launchd...whatever that is, so unfortunately, David, most of your post is gibberish to me.  Not your fault of course, it's my ignorance.  

    Thanks anyway, but I guess I'd better wait until Sophos gets around to fixing sav so that it works with File Vault out of the box, so to speak.  Although I'm fanatic about backing up, having to reinstall the OS is a real hassle.

    :1001027
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