Version 9.5.2 Released Today

The automatic update to 9.5.2 went unnoticed until some wrinkles made me check the Sophos version (I hadn't installed 9.5.2 on my production machine, just a test machine for beta testing).

First, in System Preferences>Keyboard>Shortcuts, another line for "Scan with Sophos Anti-Virus" has been added and both it and, I guess, the earlier Sophos version now have their own lines when the user right-clicks on a file to view Services options, and to invoke a scan. The wrong choice simply returns nothing. But it also triggers the "syslogd" process which was consuming 155% of CPU for nearly 40 seconds and tended to slow down the Mac (I have 12 cores so it wasn't crippling).

Second, in that function, the scan setting which selects scanning for Adware and PUA's when scanning via right click Process>Scan with Sophos (which I discovered some months ago and turned on) was turned off after the update.

Third, I didn't realize that the update had occurred and only discovered it after trouble-shooting that right click scan failure. Is there some way of notifying Sophos users when an update this extensive occurs in the background? One reason is that I suspect the Mac and Sophos would probably both benefit from a reboot for such a major change.

On the plus side, thank you for releasing this version. I was getting to the point of installing the "Preview" on my main Mac.[;)]

Howdy,

Thanks for the feedback. In general we are pretty happy when upgrades happen without complications, but sounds like it didn't go exactly perfectly this time around for you. Sorry about that, definitely not what we hoped.

The Shortcuts thing is a constant pain to get right. 9.5 changed the way it works quite a bit (we don't launch the full UI for it any more), and the system doesn't always like to "forget" about the old settings. Best workaround is to uncheck the one you don't want. I'll ask one of my developers to see if there is a way to clean that up better.

Also a bit weird about the PUA configuration, the setting should have been preserved across the update. Did you notice any other configuration changes?

Good feedback about the announcements. We might be able to put something into the product.

bobcook said:

...The Shortcuts thing is a constant pain to get right. 9.5 changed the way it works quite a bit (we don't launch the full UI for it any more), and the system doesn't always like to "forget" about the old settings. Best workaround is to uncheck the one you don't want...

Oddly enough, before the 9.5 update, I already had two Sophos shortcuts (probably from 9.4 and a still earlier version) but they both worked so I never gave it much thought. With 9.5.2 I had three Sophos shortcuts and only one worked. The solution was to turn only one on at a time and test it to see which worked, then leave the rest off so only one appears in the Services list. Notably, on my system at least, of the three shortcuts in the System Preferences list, only the middle one worked.

I haven't noticed any other configuration changes but I do note that turning On-Access scanning off and on is much faster.

Nothing is ever simple. But I'm glad 9.5.2 has been released.

bobcook said:

...The Shortcuts thing is a constant pain to get right. 9.5 changed the way it works quite a bit (we don't launch the full UI for it any more), and the system doesn't always like to "forget" about the old settings. Best workaround is to uncheck the one you don't want...

Oddly enough, before the 9.5 update, I already had two Sophos shortcuts (probably from 9.4 and a still earlier version) but they both worked so I never gave it much thought. With 9.5.2 I had three Sophos shortcuts and only one worked. The solution was to turn only one on at a time and test it to see which worked, then leave the rest off so only one appears in the Services list. Notably, on my system at least, of the three shortcuts in the System Preferences list, only the middle one worked.

I haven't noticed any other configuration changes but I do note that turning On-Access scanning off and on is much faster.

Nothing is ever simple. But I'm glad 9.5.2 has been released.

If you right-click on the Services item (System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services) and select Show in Finder it will highlight the application which registered the service. The only "correct" one is /Library/Sophos Anti-Virus/SophosUIServer.app.

There isn't a nice system API to unregister them. Supposedly the system figures out which ones can be removed when the software is removed, but it seems a bit flakey.

In 9.5 we moved the service from the main GUI application (/Applications/Sophos Anti-Virus.app) to the SophosUIServer.app to avoid having to launch the full app when you run a scan. The SophosUIServer.app is the thing that makes the Sophos shield menu, and thus is always running when you log in.

Hope that helps.