After my previous observation of Endpoint’s memory usage, I came across a disk space issue. On both test Windows 2003 clients, I found that the space on C: was completely gone. Using some space analysis tools I found that on both servers, c:\program files\common files\Symantec shared\virusdefs contained several gigs of temp files. Some research on Symantec’s forum’s showed me that this was a common problem. I also found on this blog that this should be fixed in MR2. I have not checked my version number, but I am assuming that I don’t have MR2 installed. I haven’t yet had a chance to install and test, but have instead removed Endpoint from one of the test servers, and my own desktop where I was testing. Performance on my machine instantly improved. My machine is a brand new Dell, with dual core and 2gb of ram. If it can slow that down so drastically, I am definitly not going to drag older machine’s down with Endpoint. Hopefully MR2 improves these problems.
Archive for the 'Software' Category
Over the past week I have been playing with Symantec Endpoint in preparation for a migration from Symantec Client Security 10. Endpoint is basically the next version of Symantec’s anti-virus with a firewall and antispyware combined. The management server seemed to have way more features than the previous version, however the interface is not any more intuitive than before. Now, I’ve always noticed that symantec’s products are huge resource hogs, so I was surprised to notice that the size of rtvscan.exe had only a fraction of the mem usage of previous versions. However on further investigation on several test machines I found that the usage was actually rediculously higher. I’ve compiled a chart showing the differences in the usage. I had four test machines running on VMware virtual machines. Two windows xp clients, and two windows 2003 servers, one as a client, and the other as a management server. Both Endpoint, and Client Security 10 memory usage is shown.
| XP SP3 | No client | 110 mb |
| XP SP3 | Client Security 10 | 190 mb |
| XP SP3 | Endpoint | 283 mb |
| Win2003 | No client | 90 mb |
| Win2003 | Client Security 10 | 266 mb |
| Win2003 | Endpoint Client | 285 mb |
| Win2003 | Symantec 10 Server | 555 mb |
| Win2003 | Endpoint Server | 1037 mb |
| Win2003 | Endpoint Server w/ Management program open | 1403 mb |
All the test machines has a fully updated system with nothing running but the Symantec program, wiht the exception of the Symantec 10 server which was also running several smaller inhouse apps. The management program uses java, (another pig) which explains the high use of memory when the management app is open. I attempted to do PCmark benchmarks, however it didnt like the virtual machines.
This is an horrible misuse of memory. The program’s size on disk is less than all that. Several posts by developers on symantec’s forums mentioned that they tried to reduce the memory footprint. Not sure how they thought they were doing that. I am hesitant to start rolling this out, because I know that all my users will start complaining about their machines slowing down. I am running the endpoint client on my machine, however its a brand new Dell and has plenty of resources to spare. I just need to install it on a Vista machine for the ultimate bloat experience.
I have finally created a JavaScript version of my C# password generator. The javascript version located here will generate multiple random passwords containing upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Just hit the generate button to get your passwords. Remember your passwords and keep them in a safe place.
I have several ideas to extend the functionality of this tool, and I will work on them when I get time over the next few months. If you have any suggestions please let me know.
Winternals Software announced today that they have been bought by Microsoft. They were bought so that Microsoft could hire the two founders of the company, Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. These two guys are talented Windows programmers who should add a lot to the Windows development team. They are well known for Sysinternals, the system tools that are extremely helpful in troubleshooting windows. Microsoft is also aquiring all these tools in the deal. I think that this is an excellent move by Microsoft. They get two excellent developers, and all the great support tools. I know Microsoft likes to use the Sysinternals tools, because every time I am on a support call with them they have me download and use one of the tools. It would be great if Microsoft could bundle these tools into Windows, or the windows support tools pack. This would make it much easier to use these tools.
However part of the reason that the Sysinternals tools were so great were because they were third party tools. Now that they are owned by Microsoft, more people will be more distrustful of the tools. But I think that it is a good move overall. Perhaps some other developers in Microsoft will be able to add helpful features to the tools. I definitly do not think that Microsoft will charge for these tools, since there support department uses them so much.
I have written a small program that will generate random passwords of any size. I am constantly making up new passwords for different things, and found several other password generators online. But I thought I’d write my own for the fun of it. I wrote it in C# using the new Visual C# Express Edition. So it requires the .Net 2.0 framework to run. Next I’d like to convert it to javascript and put it online. You can download the program here and the source here. Feel free to do with it as you like. Continue reading ‘C# Password Generator’
I have mentioned how I use Microsoft’s Virtual Server to create hosts for different projects. So I thought I would write a howto showing how to get Virtual Server up and running. I took screenshots of the whole process and describe some useful features that I use. There are several different virtualization products, but I think the Virtual Server is one of the better ones. It is also free too.
First download Virtual Server from Microsoft’s web site. Continue reading ‘Setup a host with virtual server’
Google just released the limited beta version of their new online Spreadsheet application. I signed up as soon as it was available and received my invitation a few hours later. After working on a few spreadsheets with it, I found it to be a nice, easy to use spreadsheet application. I think it has a lot of potential. However, I am not planning to switch from Excel to Google Spreadsheets anytime soon. This got me thinking about the pros and cons of online office apps, and I hace concluded that most office apps have a long way to go before they are widely used. So here is a list of some of the cons of online applications, and my thoughts about them.
Continue reading ‘Will Online Office Apps take over the desktop?’
I have been using the Office 2007 Beta for the past few weeks, and I have a few problems with it. My biggest problem is with the new interface. While I think the new interface looks slick, my problem with it is that it is new. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Publisher, have all had virtually the same interface since they first came to Windows in 1992: Continue reading ‘Microsoft Office 2007 Review’
This is a pretty interesting screenshot I took showing what can happen with a VNC loopback. I have setup VNC tunneling over ssh to connect to my pc from my work. I also use the Cisco VPN client to connect to my work. I then use Remote Desktop to get to my work pc. Two different methods to do the same thing in different directions, right. Now I have to use the cisco method to get to my work from a virtual machine I have setup on Virtual Server, because of a driver problem with Windows XP 64-bit. So I have connected to my work here, then I connected back to my pc from work.
As you can see it started opening tons of VNC connections, since it kept looping around. Kind of like holding two mirrors together. I guess it would keep going forever, except the computer would eventually crash. I closed the first vnc windows pretty quickly, and everything was back to normal. I wouldn’t recommend doing this, but I wanted to see what would happen.
I came across a very useful tool for logging port use in Windows. It is called the Port Reporter. This tool runs as a service on a Windows 2000, XP, or 2003 computer. It logs all TCP and UDP port use to log files. A seperate utility called the Port Reporter Parser provides a nice GUI interface for viewing the log files and analyzing the data.
Continue reading ‘Port Reporter, a Windows tool for logging port use’