Sophos v5 upgrade problems.

[ChrisH]

Ah right when you said GPO I assumed the normal method .

[MkII]

hmmm - still not working I get quota errors in event viewer. The command line works perfectly run as local admin, but not as a machine startup script.

 

Any tips anyone?

[MkII]

Sorted! Permissions issue on my install point - not on a server.

 

I've used the three seperate .MSI's rather than the setup.exe as above. Is it better or worse to use MSI??

[MkII]

Whoops! - spoke too soon!

 

Thought i'd try the documented method. Noticed a couple of errors with the MSI install - Sophos AV wouldn't update as "newer version installed" was the error! Then the prog went AWOL. Updater and management components were still there and functional. Plus the updater was correctly configured with the address/user/pass.

 

...and the documented method failed with the old error again! The share and folder permissions are both set to everyone read & execute.

 

I'm wondering if the packages need to be installed in any particular order. I added them in the order of AV, Updater and Manager.

[Jay_CSS]

We use v3 Sophos, LEA (South Gloucs) won't upgrade us to new version but say they are testing an alternative called NOD32. Downloaded a trial and i quite like it, very simple and apparently nice admin tools.

 

Oh and i still have to use SAVAdmin to deploy Sophos as new console says 'Unkown OS' for about 80% of the machines on the network, not helpful!

[ChrisH]

I got mine working eventually. For some reason in the Update policy it had lost the end of its path so instead of \\server\interchk\esxp it was just \\server\interchk grrrr and I hadnt changed it lately either so I dont know whats happenend there.

Come on people lets hear about those exclusions!!!!!

I will start with the oone thats makes your machine take about 20 minutes to log on

 

c:\wndows\system32\mswsock.dll

[MkII]

Sorted now ta!

[RobC]

Come on people lets hear about those exclusions!!!!!

I will start with the oone thats makes your machine take about 20 minutes to log on

 

c:\wndows\system32\mswsock.dll

 

Hmmm. Think I might test this with a machine and see if it has any bearing on the long logon times here...

[indiegirl]

Come on people lets hear about those exclusions!!!!!

I will start with the oone thats makes your machine take about 20 minutes to log on

 

c:\wndows\system32\mswsock.dll

 

For those of you running SIMS.net, you should exclude your mapped SIMS "setups" folder within SAV Policies, otherwise you've got about 70mb being pulled over to be scanned by SAV... and then it runs the SIMS update check. I had users complaining that SIMS.net was taking up to 45 minutes to load (on v old machines) because of this. One exclusion and everyone's happy again.

[ZeroHour]

God I feel sorry for you guys.

I have been working with version 5 since it came out and we still dont have it rolled out. We get lots of issues with unsigned software drivers (aka the Sophos Engine) and sophos dont have a clue. I have been through there tech support team so many times now its mad. I finally got to speak to a developer and he fixed one of the problems but as soon as that ticket was closed I had to start at the bottom of the support tree for the other issues.

 

I will try to help you all as much as possible from my experiences.

 

Good luck

[john]

ZeroHour, welcome to my world, I have been working with Devs since May on V5! They got fed up so the ticket is still open, but I started a new one, and 6 weeks later I have gone from the 1st support level to 3rd, but still waiting for them to get back to me. MY issue with it is, when the server does its auto update from the web, it leave DLLLoader behind when finished, so over time (on my servers case 72hrs) its used all the Ram up and then dying a painful death! We have narrowed it down to an issue with the latest EMlibrary release and ISA server 2004, but we have not changed any policies in either Sophos or ISA since before V5 and at the start V5 worked well (in terms of updating) so its something Sophos have done thats upsettin ISA, but can they work it out, nope! Any thoughts are welcome.

[everton4europe]

All my sites used to use Sophos. I moved on to Trend Client Server with no issues. this is a better product. The only issue i had was finding a supplier. Which i ended up going through Network Defence. Trend will make there product as competativly priced as Sophos. With non of the issues you seem to have.

[ZeroHour]

John, what are the details of your server? Server 2k? It wont be isa 2004 as we run that here and its fine. Do you have any download blocking software such as GFI(HELL)?

 

Everton I like trend, the problem is it aint as fast at getting IDE's out the door.

[john]

It is Server 2000 with SP4 and all the latest updates. I have not heard anything for weeks from them, I am off to Bett on Wednesday, and I am stopping at any Anti-V companys stands to get info, trials etc... on rival products for our place and some other local schools as Sophos Support Sucks at present. The Puremessage is the dogs danglies, but the desktop / Server anti-V is not good at present. Our way of thinking is keep the puremessage for the mailserver as we like it, and it works very well for us, but the clients and servers (appart from mailserver) will get something else. We are lucky in that we can re-deploy all our IT suites using RIS in a day, so if I was to trial another make, I could come in on a Sunday and re-do the lot and then see what its like.

 

The last suggestion I had from Sophos was could I upgrade the server to Server 2003 and see if it still does it! I told them no I cannot as I have not got the budget to upgrade to 2003 as we are a 2000 network.

 

Now that is now un-true as this server is the only 2000 left as the rest went on to 2003 at Crimbo, but as my manager agrees, why should we have to spend money upgrading the OS at our expense when Sophos's documentation says that it is Server 2000 compatable.

 

Also the servers hardware is not really the best for running 2003 on it (P3 600 MHz, 384MB ram, 40GB Hard Drive) so we would need to put Sophos on a new server, which we don't want to do in case it messes that up like it does this one, so that is another £2000 - £2500 for another HP Proliant DL380 server, and U360 73GB 15K disks for that.

 

Another option Sophos Support said was can I put it outside of ISA and the schools Firewall and see if that helps! I am fed up, I have installed the Server stuff on my Laptop, My desktop, another server etc... and each time it fails. My point is what have they changed since the original release of EM Library 3 (or what ever number it was in April when Enterprise Solutions were launched) as it worked fine, until one day, we had not changed a thing since the previous september (IE Sept 2004) so they have done something, but they won't admit they are wrong.

 

As for the rest of the lan etc... We have a leased line, that we firewall ourselves, and filter using Websense , and use ISA 2004 for the Proxy. As Sophos is set to use a domain admin account to work, update etc and the machine has the ISA firewall client, then it goes straight through ISA, as well as straight through Websense as Domain Admins get fully unfiltered and restricted internet accesss 24X7, so its not that in out view at all, and Websense say that Sophos works fine with it as they have others that use it.

[ChrisH]

Well Ive been giving this another go yesterday and today and have followed all the articles given to me by Sophos support. I have got rid of the slow startup issues but im now getting issues when logging on and it taking along time. I have stopped it from scanning the remote files it connects to for which I had to edit an xml file as theres no option in the console but to no avail. I have confirmed the setting is inplace by logging on as local administrator.

This local account goes on easily so I know it still the network issue. Anyone else sorted this before I get back onto Sophos?

[john]

Got that issue but TBH, cannot be arsed to put it to them as they have still not fixed my other issues. On all my Win 2K machines its so slow to log on, log off, and even shut down, and when you remove all the sophos bits it starts to be "normal" again, but when they go back on, even excluding all the suggested bits and bytes it still is slow. Fine, I need to upgrade them to XP Pro, but as I have said before, if they support 2000 they need to support us, I should not have to spend a couple of £ upgrading my machines to stop faulty software making life hell! If Sophos are willing to pay for the upgrade licences I would be happy, but I cannot see them doing that.

 

Whilst at BETT on Wednesday, talked to a nice bloke from AVG, and the pricing is highly attractive for 200 machines, very impressed with it and will certainly be back in touch with them again in a few weeks time for trial, and lots more info on the admin side of things

[ZeroHour]

The only problem is Sophos has a REALLY fast IDE turn around. Thats why we still with them.

On XP we have experienced poor performance when set to on-read. CPU usaage spikes to 30-50% on SAVService when running a app thanks to that setting. Its hard to tell what to do. Its a big setting. We have it on-write and rename currently.

[ChrisH]

It my XP machines that are the problem at the moment I havent put it on any 2000 machines yet. I also set mine to write only to get some decent performance but that is pretty much crippling it !!

[katie.lawe]

We are having similar problems, since deploying V5 the savservice is taking upto and above 40MB of the memory. This is not good as we are experiencing a large slow down on the machine.

 

Any advice on settings?

 

Katie Lawe

Network Manager