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Sophos fails to update on old Linux systems

Phaethar

Hey all,

It would seem that the new version of Sophos for Linux that was released this week is failing to install on some of our older Linux systems. Specifially, I have a few (very) old systems running Petium 3 CPUs with 512MB of RAM, and on each one of these systems the update failed, and has continued to fail, since May 8th. These systems all update from a central Enterprise Conolse server.

The error these systems get are all the same:

savd: update.failed: /opt/sophos-av/update/cache/Primary/install.sh: line 282: 25886 Illegal instruction     "$PYTHON" -c "import Installer.SavForLinux,sys;sys.exit(Installer.SavForLinux.SavForLinux.main(sys.argv))" "$DISTDIR" "$@" "$coreopt" "$talpaopt"

At that, the update fails and tries again at the next scheduled interval. These systems have been failing every couple hours now for the past couple days. The only similarity I can see between these systems is the fact that they are all running the same old CPU. Did something change with the release this week that would cause Sophos to be unable to install on these systems?

We have Enterprise Console set to keep the Linux version up to date on version 9. These systems are running CentOS 5.

Systems that have updated successfully show a product version of 4.89.0, an engine version of 3.43.0 and a virus data version of 4.89, with a release date of May 8th. Systems that have failed to update show a product version of 4.87, an engine version of 3.41, and virus data version of 4.87, with a release date of March 13. The last IDE file loaded on those systems is also May 8, which means they are not loading new definitions since the new version came out either. Needless to say, we need to figure out why so the systems can update again.

Any thoughts on what's happening here?

:39987


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  • 0

    You have probably been upgraded to Sophos Anti-Virus 9.2, which has a new compile environment, based on RHEL 4 using gcc 4.7 x86_64.

    Looks like gcc might default its -m32 build to a matching -march as the x86_64 ABI it's building to.

    I think you should raise this with Sophos Support to request SAVLinux be rebuilt to work on those machines.

    :40035
  • 0

    Yeah, I do also have a support ticket opened with Sophos as well. Trying to download the IDE files manually for now to keep the systems up to date. Still no word on why the installation is failing however.

    I don't think it's strictly a 32-bit vs 64-bit issue, at least based on some of the other systems we have. I do still have a handful of systems running Centos 5 that are 32-bit only, and most of them have updated successfully. It's only these really old ones that are failing. Any chance the compiler is now using SSE2 or something similar that these old P3 CPUs don't support?

    :40039
  • 0

    The x86-32 code is compiled on an x86_64 machine using gcc's -m32 option, which appears to default to -march=x86-64 for 32-bit code. The installer is failing as the python executable is using instructions not available on the P3 processor.

    :40041
  • 0

    Yeah, I would assume it's all compiled on 64-bit systems at this point, just as I'd assume the -m32 option would need to be used in order for all the 32-bit systems to be able to run it. I'm certainly no expert on gcc, but I'm not familiar with the -march=x86-64 option. I'd always thought it needed a specific CPU type specified, such as -march=pentium3 or something. Either way, if the march architecture is set to anything newer than pentium3, then it would be trying to use SSE2 or newer, which would not be supported.

    Unfortunately, none of this was mentioned anywhere in the system requirements. We now have to rebuild multiple systems with different hardware in order to keep Sophos working. What are the chances of having the installer updated so the -march option specifies something like simply i386?

    :40083
  • 0

    Been runing fine up until today July 10th. Machine has failed to update from 4.89 to 4.91, looks like same problem.  My processor supports SSE but not SSE2. Was the 4.87 problem ever fixed?

    :41535