A bug that existed in the later versions of AntiVirus for Mac 10 has re-appeared in the stuff released this week for 11.
Every time you boot and log in, Live Update runs.
I have one scheduled event, a daily all products update, that runs correctly at the scheduled time.
I tried deleting that event in the Antivirus program (which deleted properly). Then in the Scheduler, I also did a Reset which created the default weekly update event. Then in the scheduler I deleted that weekly event and added a new daily event to do my update. So once again there is still, just the one daily event.
Despite all that, it is still the case that Live Update runs each time I boot and log in. My daily event also runs at the planned time.
As I recall the bug in 10 had to do with a file whose last modified date wasn't being accessed correctly so that Live Update always thought the prior day's update still had to run every time you booted up.
If you have Norton Internet Security, this is the designed behavior. Norton Internet Security will update some definition types every 2 hours, which is more consistent with our Windows products. LiveUpdate is set to launch and update certain updates whenever you log in, or every 2 hours.
These updates should be silent--that is you shouldn't see the LiveUpdate UI. Is that not the case?
I am also seeing this behaviour and I do not have NIS installed. I only have NAV 11.1. LiveUpdate runs every time I restart and log-in to my Mac. This only started happening after updating to the latest version of NAV and LiveUpdate last week. I have a Mac Pro with Mac OS X 10.5.8.
I have attached the output from the 'Gather Symantec Info' script. Hope this helps.
Stuart
PS> I had to rename the .ZIP file to .TXT in order to attach it.
A bug that existed in the later versions of AntiVirus for Mac 10 has re-appeared in the stuff released this week for 11.
Every time you boot and log in, Live Update runs.
I have one scheduled event, a daily all products update, that runs correctly at the scheduled time.
I tried deleting that event in the Antivirus program (which deleted properly). Then in the Scheduler, I also did a Reset which created the default weekly update event. Then in the scheduler I deleted that weekly event and added a new daily event to do my update. So once again there is still, just the one daily event.
Despite all that, it is still the case that Live Update runs each time I boot and log in. My daily event also runs at the planned time.
As I recall the bug in 10 had to do with a file whose last modified date wasn't being accessed correctly so that Live Update always thought the prior day's update still had to run every time you booted up.
Ryan, I too only have Antivirus 11 installed. This behavior changed with the updates pushed out this week.
The unexpected update that happens now when I boot up and log in is visible in precisely the same way my daily scheduled update is visible. That is Live Update appears in the dock, then eventually a searching for updates panel appears, then the final live update display appears showing which items have been updated.
Ryan, it’s indeed not ‘silent’ anymore. I run the latest version of NIS on 10.6.2 and everytime I log in, the LiveUpdate window pops up. Prior to the latest updates it used to do this silently in the background indeed, but not so after updating.
Any chance of an update to fix this issue? It's not a biggie but it is kinda annoying having LiveUpdate run everytime you start your Mac. If it ran in the background with no visible UI (unless there was an update available) it wouldn't be so bad...
We're still investigating this issue, but we were wondering if you could help us out by running the following command at the Terminal:
syslog -c syslogd
This command will show the current settings of the datastore filter (i.e. what things are written to the system log). We had some previous cases where scheduled events were running daily, and we discovered that they their logging settings had been altered so that shutdown times were no longer being written to the system log. We rely on this log entry to determine what events (if any) were missed between the last shutdown and the current startup. The settings are user configurable, but the default will log these events.
I think there are some utility programs out there that will help keep your computer "clean" by altering these settings so that less events are logged - probably to keep the size of your log files to a minimum.
Here is the output from the 'syslog -c syslogd' command on my Mac:
ASL Data Store filter mask: Emergency - Notice
Note that this issue only started occurring after the recent NAV update. I do use 'system cleaning' utils on my Mac. Specifcally AppleJack and Onyx. I haven't run either in the last couple of weeks.
Nick, the output of my Syslog command is identical to what Stukey posted.
I don't use any such cleaning utilities on my Powerbook laptop (OS 10.5.8). The only thing I do that has anything remotely like that effect is perform a Safe Boot occasionally to get the benefit of its cache deletions and other background maintenance tasks. I also do PRAM resets occasionally. I can't recall if I've done either since the latest NAV updates were pushed out.
We now know why this is happening and are evaluating a fix for it. In the mean time - I think I have a work around that should make the log in event occur without any UI. I hope someone will try it.
1. Use the Finder to navigate to the file /Users/<short user name>/Library/Preferences/com.symantec.symsched
where <short user name> is the short form of your user name.
2. Drag every file in this folder to the trash. Do not delete the directory itself.
3. Open "Symantec Scheduler" by double clicking on "/Applications/Symantec Solutions/Symantec Scheduler"
4. This should open the Symantec Scheduler UI. For each "Product Update" event listed.
a. Double click on the event to bring up the "Edit Product Update Task" window
b. Make sure the "Do not show progress" box is checked.
c. Click "Save".
This should make alll the Live Update events occur siliently.
John, I'm glad you are making progress on this, but I hope the fix will be to NOT have an update happen with each boot/login for NAV customers. There are times when I want to boot up with as little as possible happening -- such as when I'm about to initiate a software install, or when I'm trying to diagnose a problem and want to get the system into a fresh state with as little as possible happening beyond the boot and login itself.
Or if you feel an update on each boot/login needs to be the factory default, there should be an easy way to turn that off. I mean, why can't a non-display update at each boot/login just be a line item in the scheduler so you can delete it if you don't want that to happen?
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As I understand it, your workaround for now will only keep the visible display from showing, rather than preventing the update itself. If I've got that correct, I'm going to decline. If an update is in progress, I want to know it, so that I *DON'T* do something that is more safely done without additional background tasks already in progress -- again, such as a software install. I know I could go into Activity Monitor to check, but I'd be happier if things would revert to the way it was before these recent updates -- i.e., no automatic update at boot/login at all.
I haven't changed anything on my system but this morning LiveUpdate has already run 5 times since I started my Mac (about 30 minutes ago). The first time it downloaded a pattern file update. Since then it just seems to be running every couple of mins, finding 'nothing to update' and then I quit it.
My entry is slightly different after the proposed syslog command and reads:
ASL Data Store filter mask: Emergency - Debug
I don't run cleaning utilities on a regular basis and the originating action of this behavior was simply updating NIS. I'll be trying the suggested workaround later today. Anyway, thanks for keeping us posted on this!
John, you da man. The workaround works. Thanks for the tip! The only bug I can see remaining is that the “Open Symantec Scheduler” in the Quickmenu opens the Firewall application instead (ever since the update to the latest version of NIS). But that’s a different issue entirely and too small for me to report separately.
This was a problem that I reported in relation to NAV 10.2 -- search this forum for the thread "Monthly Schedule Running Daily." We did eventually come to a solution, which involved changing the ASL Data Store filter mask so that it logged more than just emergency notices.
To anyone at Symantec who is following this thread, evadperez helped me through fixing this in NAV 10 -- hopefully he remembers what we did.
Strangely, this just started happening to me too, even though I have upgraded to NAV 11 and Snow Leopard. I thought I was going crazy.