Outpost Firewall 9.2

So today I see on the Agnitum website 9.2 is released with Windows 10 support, As I have a lifetime licence, I downloaded it and installed it.....or tried The first obstacle was the Compatibility message that I have Avira installed, only this time it says Avira Family Product, previously it said Avira Free, or Avira Security, or something like that. Anyway I leave it as is, and a message says Success! you cannot install Outpost on this system with Avira installed How the frig can it be a success if it can be installed along with Avira is the first question So I unticked Avira family product, and it installed all ok, except now it turns off the Avira Firewall component, and Avira tells me my system is not secure, with the Umbrella icon showing as off!
Previously this didn't happen, so I'm kind of lost on how to proceed
btw... there's absolutely sod all on the Agnitum forums, I think they're all dead

 

I thought 9.2 was out for a while?

 

Yes, you're right. Been out for a at least a month or maybe 6 weeks.

 

Have you tried uninstalling Avira then installing Outpost then re-installing Avira? , a bit of a hassle I know but worth a try I guess.

 

The current Avira free has an odd feature - it insists that the Windows native firewall must run. So any other firewall is doomed since then Win firewall is disabled. I've seen it with Outpost and Private Firewall on Win7.

Outpost forum is nearly dead, but still there are several experts visiting there on and off and offering good answers.
Main issue is there's a user there who interrupts every thread with useless short comments, so you'll spend more time scrolling than gathering information you're looking for. And of course, total absence of Agnitum people and their ignorance of issues posted, such as the still non-resizeable little windows displaying long paths which we can't read.

 

I think the problem with avira and outpost is that outpost disables windows firewall when it installs whereas avira (last time i tried it)had a module that basically protected windows firewall and stopped anything disabling it ,hence the incompatability.

 

It is a pain having non resizable windows but i believe the long paths can be read by hovering the mouse pointer over them ,which brings the path to the foreground.

 

Thanks, figured out that if I went to uninstall programs, and chose modify/change on Avira and remove firewall component, everything's fine

 

Yes, but I only visited the page yesterday, so I only found out yesterday

 

act8192, Hello
That is quite a statement! forum is not dead firewall is so sweet and good..we 'Agnitum' forum' has nothing to report because it the best functioning firewall so grand nothing to complain about!!

 

There is a memory leak existing in all 9.2 versions so far including two silent minor updates since the official 'release' and the notes do not say what has been changed in these silent updates but it still hasn 't been fixed. Every time an app is launched or closed, the handle count goes up. By the end of the day it takes up more than the rest of my system combined. I haven't been able to spend a lot of time tracking it yet but I have narrowed it down from acs.exe to the sand.ofp plugin

I've given up on the forum as well, it's turned into nothing but mindless fanbois. I love Outpost and have used it for years over many major revisions and I've supported them across forums and suggested it to many people but I'm not willing to turn a blind eye to the slow update time and problems that now exist nor will I call 9.2 sweet and good pretending it's a perfect release.

 

Hello, syrinx..I suppose you have tried the the support thing on your memory leak issue?
http://www.agnitum.com/support.php

I am not sure what your getting at on silent updates?? with no change logs!
Version is still 9.2 build 4859.708.2041

 

oppss!! I stand corrected and eatin some crow soup
just downloaded a exe suite file and sure as heaven
build number is 4859.708.2046.604

 

Yes once I was able to confirm it wasn't just me and my unique setup, I sent in a bug report. Hopefully others did as well.
http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?27994-Windows-7-x64-and-OSS-9-2-Handle-Leak-(

I would have happily stuck with 9.1 and been more patient but it turns out a recent Windows security update broke some aspects of the HIPS module in 9.1 so I am now forced to stick with 9.2 where the HIPS works properly or replace Outpost entirely unless I was willing to undo the update and expose myself to a known kernel exploit...so dealing with the handle leak and ensuring I reboot every day has been my only recourse so far. Needless to say, I'm a bit unhappy with the situation atm as I like to keep my core os/apps nice and trim in many aspects.

I checked my notes about where I had gotten in tracing the handle leak in the sand.ofp and I was last looking at a new (or is it just completely rewritten?) subroutine calling CreateEventW which I think is related to the culprit but haven't been able to isolate the actual problem (where it is not closing it but should be) yet.

 

Have you posted this at the forum?

 

@hayc59,
Re: handle leaks which I also see but since I reboot every day it's no issue for me . Syrinx's post is here: http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?27994-Windows-7-x64-and-OSS-9-2-Handle-Leak-(

Re: dead forum. I didn't say it's dead. I said nearly dead. Big difference. And no offense meant. I'm grateful when an expert replies rather than the spamming user.

 

well nothings perfect.....and when it is ,someone goes and changes it.

 

All the mods and supermods/admins, all of us unpaid volunteers and ourselves users, do spend a lot of time reading and answering the queries over at the forum. we are all in very different time zones, so do not expect quick replies. agnitum staff do also read the forum posts, but do not usually respond directly, tho they will in some circumstances. they prefer discussing it with us first to maintain the user-operated nature of the outpost forum. we tend to post info on new releases before they are apparent on the agnitum forum, so pop in and check us occasionally. agnitum are working on a new release, tho we have no info on their schedule as yet. we do expect interim 9.x's to improve win10 compatibility. 9.2 was delayed not by agnitum, but by microsoft, who did not sign the release until a few days before agnitum released it in september.

if you do have problems, we can help better if we can reproduce them, so any details on your system setup, other security software you may have installed currently or in the past, and exact steps totake so we can try to reproduce the problem, and any thing you have already tried to fix it that did not work, will help us find a solution, or if we cannot help directly, will help agnitum fix any problems at their end. sometimes we cannot reproduce it and have to pass you to agnitum. please also note their support page my not pop up the form they want you to fill out unless you have all your pop-up blockers turned off in your browsers and their addons, as well as in outpost & you may have to allow ActiveX in web control.

as far as "Main issue is there's a user there who interrupts every thread with useless short comments", we have PM'd him to refrain from these terse comments and less than helpfull suggestions. if he does not, we may be forced to do more. i think he was trying too hard in a language which is not his first one. google translate can only help so far...

p.s. - has anyone actually had a problem with the 'handles' - any errors or bsods? does it crash acs.exe? does retsarting acs start the count over again if it does? have you set the agnitum service to restart in the recovery tab for the service? if so please post in the thread on handle leaks in the forum. ik let mine run for a couple days, the count reached rather large numbers, but otherwise did not seem to have any effect.

 

the installer version IS 2046

the version of OSS it installs remains 2041 after installation. this is a sign all the installer has had change is the a/v sigs to keep it fresher and cut d/l time on it's 1st a/v update. so you were not really wrong. don't eat that soup!

 

Doesn't look like much changed but the gui was certainly updated/altered, it's signed Nov 3 so that combined with your reasoning explains why they haven't updated the changelog at least since no important components have been updated.

 

Using comments from MS Engineers I've stated the most probable outcomes in past comments on the thread I started on the agnitum forum but seeing as no on seems to care about what ifs and what might be, I have a simulation running in the background to find out exactly what happens when it can't commit any more handles. It is based on a rather trim Windows XP SP3 VM and has already surpassed the (my) expected number though that may be due more to the fact the OS it is being tested on is nLited and starts off at at around 70MB w < 1k handles. ACS is currently chugging along at over 2 MILLION (way beyond what I had expected it would handle- pun intended) Overall it's not bad so far considering. The real zinger will still be what happens (or doesn't) when it reaches the limit. I will keep you posted once I have an actual answer there...

If nothing else, the fact it reaches 2 Million on this VM without issue says to me that I may have been over reacting a bit. I'd still like to see it fixed but for most use, rebooting once a day will solve any potential issues. Should we accept this as a 'standard' or 'irrelevant' though? What happens when other programmers don't care about handle leaks and EVERY program (dare I say including MS own) starts to leak handles. Would the result of barely/no effect ring true? I think not....there has to be some logic to the limits?! Then again we are talking about MS so /whistle....
Either way I think it's better to cut off the flow of such issues asap. I'm getting ahead of myself though - It hasn't even been a month since this was reported to them. As long as it (the leak) doesn't linger beyond the official releases (now that I have a better grasp of what those silent revisions I noticed were for) I'm [somewhat] happy.

2.5Mil and counting...just WOW! Go winblows! Given the initial handle count that could be expected using the info posted by MS it may take over a week before we know for sure what happens. This seems to imply that there is nothing to worry about (and for the personal user that may ring true [as long as you reboot at least once a week/month]) but Outpost isn't strictly a consumer product. I USED to keep one of my PCs up 99% of the time. That one was a minecraft server for my daughter and her friends. ATM I'm stuck keeping it up only when I know they'll be on to ensure it doesn't have potential issues related to this handle leak.

Being one of those odd users who took great care to ensure that my Win 7 x64 OS and all my security/standard programs took LESS THAN 10K handles [its actually < 4.5k not including hardware specific drivers or any programs] (among other limits) total has left me feeling slighted when I see one of those previously excellent programs (I relied on) ruining even a single aspect of those 'personal limit's I placed on myself (the OS) - particularly when it can easily get into the MILLIONS, I start to get a tad upset.

That being said, 3Mil and no noticeable difference on responsiveness of the VM, hmm...maybe I've been worried about nothing?

 

Outpost firewall 9.2 eats too much memory in Windows 10, acs + op_mon = 80 000 ko.


My computer : 4 GO, Win 10, antivirus Windows Defender, no other antimalwares.

 

If i understand the blog here...
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/09/29/3283844.aspx
Windows 7 allows a an individual resource of over 16 million handles ,so i guess there shouldn't be a problem.Following the blog and using process explorer ,where possible handle leaks in ACS.EXE were shown as new handles (green)and closing handles (red),i couldn't see a lot wrong ,with the handling process.Currently on my windows 7 32 bit ,acs.exe is opening less than 3000.I guess also the handles would change on different setups ,software etc?

 

he's been spoken to. his response was 'thank you'. he's not actually spamming, i think he is really trying to help. we'll keep an eye on him tho.

as a suggestion, you can add him to the ignore list on our outpost forum so you won't see his posts (unless someone else quotes him ) just like you can add users to the ignore list here.

 

I couldnt install 9.2 on xp pro today.
It just freezes the system on windows login screen when playing the startup jingle.
Doing a hard reset does allow me to get to a desktop screen with no start menu or system tray 1 in 3 bootups.

I even tried to install 9.1 (which does work) and then put 9.2 over the top.

I do have winpatrol, malware bytes antimalware v2 and hitman pro.alert installed but they are all disabled in msconfig on bootup and in the services display.