Sophos V 6.0.5 Memory hog?

[katem]

Hi

 

Is anyone else having problems with 'Slowphos'? We're using v 6.0.5 on some machines & it seems to be a right memory hog:

 

SavService.exe: 39,000K

SavMain.exe: 7,912K

SavAdminServe.exe: 2,204K

 

Any ideas/tips on how to reduce this or are we just stuck with it until they release a better version?

 

Also, any tips on how to resurrect my corrupt Sophos MSSQL service? The service appears but will not start. Tried a repair but to no avail...

 

Thanks

Kate

[ChrisH]

I find myself using version 4 unless the machine has at least 512 meg of ram.

[Geoff]

Don't the updates for v4 stop in January?

[ChrisH]

Don't the updates for v4 stop in January?

 

I believe so but I have now got myself to a state that all desktops are 512 meg + . Its just the last remaining Toshiba LTFT I have to worry about.

[Geoff]

Put them out of their misery.

[katem]

Well I'm not reverting to version 4 is it wasn't doing a very good job and if the updates are going to stop seems pointless. [goes away to think]

[Stese]

wrt to the sophos sql service..

if it's a separate package, can you uninstall and reinstall?

[Simcfc73]

Updated to version 6.0.5 now and every machine seems not be able to contact the update server now.

 

Had this problem a couple of months ago and they told me to go back a few versions.

[Geoff]

6.0.5 is ok here

 

* crosses fingers, prays to various gods and throws children over the right shoulder.

[CHR1S]

Were just getting the 100% CPU usage problem it brings when you try use on access scanning and zip/rar files

[6Foot2]

Hi

 

Is anyone else having problems with 'Slowphos'? We're using v 6.0.5 on some machines & it seems to be a right memory hog:

 

SavService.exe: 39,000K

SavMain.exe: 7,912K

SavAdminServe.exe: 2,204K

 

Any ideas/tips on how to reduce this or are we just stuck with it until they release a better version?

 

Thanks

 

Kate

 

I had a similar problem. Not sure if this will help you but I found that changing the Sophos Anti-Virus service logon properties helped me out. Have a look at my posting to get an idea of what I am talking about:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=5004

[john]

I have gone back to V5 of Sophos and thats much better on the client, but harsh to the Server. We have given over phoning Sophos about issues as they just never really solved the problems to our satisfaction.

[Ric_]

I experience similar problems with Sophos v6 but earlier versions were terrible at connecting to the server. I've kind of settled on being able to have less connections open on my citrix servers and a more stable SophosEM server than a server that crashes all the time and more connections.

 

I'm hoping that the memory problems will get sorted out.

[john]

Ric, there have been these memory issues since V5.0.0 so were now on V6.?.? and they are still there, but Sophos still deny they exist, despite then Webex'ing into my server to see it, they saw it and were like oh yes so we can see, but we cannot find what does it, that was months ago and my last contact to them was oh yes we cannot replicate it, so is it a problem for you! I am still sticking with V5, its supported for updates till June next year so gives them more time to fix it.

[Ric_]

@john: As I mention, earlier versions play havock with the server running the console so it's kind of catch 22!

 

In the meantime, I have had to tweak Sophos on my Citrix boxes so that the on-access scanning is toned down A LOT. This has made it slightly better. I have also reduced the maximum number of users permitted on each server. Not ideal but there you go.

 

In Lancashire, we are covered by the County's Sophos license, hence why we all use it. I dread to think how much it would cost in licensing to go down the route of another product. I think that the only way that I could maybe justify this would be if the licensing cost for AV were less than the cost of a new terminal server (approx. £3K) but I doubt that it is.

[Simcfc73]

I updated to 6.05 VDL4.11 which proceeded to play around with windows and stop certain computers logging on with a SVCHOST error. Maybe it wasn't linked but it sorted itself out when I went back a few versions.

[ZeroHour]

My Savservice is sitting at 55mb usage lol.

As for your DB I would just remove the EM console stuff and run the removal bat (get this from Sophos Support) after a reboot. Try a reinstall at that point and it hopefully will work. Its not to bad resetting EM anyway. Only takes 15 minutes to get it setup again and rolling.

[browolf]

i had to disable on-access scanning on my personal workstation. when i have a lot of stuff open, which is frequently, it was grinding to a halt. 512mb ram V6 Savservice is running at 30MB mem 38MB virtual mem

[john]

@ric, we looked at alternatives and for Sophos for us (300 users, with puremessage anti spam / virus as well as the clients) was about 4K cheaper. The alternatives claim to be competitive, but in reality the only one that came close was AVG but we had read a few bad reviews about it. Trend Micro said they wanted to get in there, we said quote us happy they came back with something like 8K for 5 years cover for all that lot, we said go back to the drawing board please, they came back with, wait for it, a quote that was 2K more than the previous as they missed the support contract out! So we said try again, and they said no can do. So Sophos is cheap, very cheap, but we have learnt cheap does not pay in this case. Trend's client had such a small footprint it was amazing, I think my clients used about 10mb memory running Trend VS 50mb running Sophos, and Trend I didnt need to run on its own server as it actually worked with something else, thus saving £2K on a new server just for Sophos. The morral of this story is Sophos still aint got it right, and that cheap does not always pay dividends.

[Ric_]

@john: I see you did your homework there. I would be interested to see how licening for terminal services/citrix works for trend. Since I only have 6 Citrix servers the cost may not be massive and I could keep all the other boxes on Sophos.

[john]

@Ric, we literally tried and /or investigated every product out there when it came to renewal after, what I can only descibe as Sophos Hell. Strong phrase I know but the worst IT illiterate teachers are easier to deal with and give better results than they did.

 

My favourite was Trend and if it wasn't so damed expensive then we would have that. I know a few businesses that use that and they like it, if it had been a few hundred £ more then yes we would have it, but the sheer cost difference being thousands meant it was a no go.

 

I am not up on Citrix / TS licencing or usage at all so I cannot help there, but all I will say is if it works, and pricing seems ok but more than Sophos, do look at it, if it means you cannot get that shiny new Dual Core laptop I would sacrifice that for Trend as in my testing and usage of it for just over 1 month in an IT suite I much prefered it over Sophos.

[bomba]

THe new version of sophos came out last night. We had the identical problems with CPU hitting 100% and processor sitting at 40mb. It was very frustrating as our supplier was loathed to admit that this was the problem. Instead blaming everything and everyone. 6.50 replaced 6.05 last night and the PCs are now working a lot better. I hope that this isn't a regular thing with Sophos as we just purchased it a month ago.

[ZeroHour]

Anyone got a 6.5 changelog yet?

Had a look yesterday but sophos were silent about it.

[john]

No change log, but would be interested to hear from others who have gone to 6.50 from 6 to see if the others memoy useage, cpu usage has decreased again back to times of old.

[katem]

No change log, but would be interested to hear from others who have gone to 6.50 from 6 to see if the others memoy useage, cpu usage has decreased again back to times of old.

 

Mine has updated to 6.50 but it seems there isn't any improvement. SavService now running at 33mb, SavMain 13mb.

 

Anyone else got anything different?