[Bug] 1.8.1 real time protection slows down some file reads drastically

Permanently deleted user

• September 28, 2021 23:28

Hi there,

I was having problems recently with searches for files on my disk taking much longer than I expected. I took some time to track down what files/directories were taking the time. To my surprise, there were some very small files (less than 1kb) which seemed to take very long (30 seconds or more) to be searched. The files in question would consistently take this long to be searched, and further investigation suggested any attempt to read the file from disk would take equally long. If I deleted the file and recreated it identically, it would be searched in a couple of milliseconds with no problem.

After a lot of further investigation, I discovered that if I disabling Real-time protection in Avira would allow a problematic file to be read instantly again. Re-enabling it would once again cause the problem. 

I am running Avira Security 1.8.1 on a MacBook Pro  (15 in 2018) with a 1 TB SSD, 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 running maxOS Big Sur 11.5.1.

I was finding problematic files as follows in case that helps:

grep -c -R x . 2> /dev/null | gawk 'BEGIN{lasttime = systime(); } { thistime = systime(); print thistime - lasttime, $0; lasttime = thistime; }' | grep '^\d\d'

Often that would indicate the precise file that was problematic, but sometimes it was a file in the same directory (I think due to the effects of output buffering). Once the problematic file was identified I see this when Avira Realtime Protection is enabled:

MacBook-Pro:RecordedFlings ablock$ ls -l fling-2017-05-10-165526.bytes; time grep -c x fling-2017-05-10-165526.bytes
-rw-r--r--  1 ablock  staff  47 Aug 18  2020 fling-2017-05-10-165526.bytes
0
real 0m42.564s
user 0m0.001s
sys 0m0.003s

So... it's taking 42 seconds to read a 47 byte file in this case! As soon as I disable Realtime Protection:

MacBook-Pro:RecordedFlings ablock$ ls -l fling-2017-05-10-165526.bytes; time grep -c x fling-2017-05-10-165526.bytes
-rw-r--r--  1 ablock  staff  47 Aug 18  2020 fling-2017-05-10-165526.bytes
0

real	0m0.005s
user	0m0.001s
sys	0m0.003s

Let me know if I can provide any other useful info. Kind regards,

    Andy

Yes 2 No

• 

  Lukas Huptas

  • October 06, 2021 13:10

  Hi Andy,

  Well, first of all, thank you very much for your detailed error description. Sadly, we cannot reproduce this issue and need to hand over this case to our colleagues from the 2nd Level Dept. 

  Due to GDPR reasons, we need to switch to email instead of posting here but you need to give us permission to change the channel. If you're fine with it, please post your "Go" here and we'll create a ticket for you.

  Best,

  Lukas Huptas

  Avira Community Manager

  Yes 0 No
• 

  Permanently deleted user

  • October 06, 2021 16:53

  Hi Lukas, 

  Yes, I'm fine with switching channels to email. Hopefully we can figure out the issue! Kind regards,

       Andy

  Yes 0 No
• 

  Lukas Huptas

  • October 11, 2021 12:59

  Hi Andy - We've created a ticket for you and you'll be contacted by one of our SLS representatives as soon as possible.

  Stay tuned and all the best,

  Lukas Huptas

  Avira Community Manager

  Yes 0 No

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