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Could not contact Primary Server

Got this message when updating Sophos Home Edition for Mac:

Could not contact Primary Server. URL Error: 3 July 2015

Mac OS X 10.10.4

Sophos Home Edition 9.2.4

As I'm in Australia and this is first report for 3rd July, am thinking this may be a cloud error with Sophos infrastructure.

If not, there's something else amiss... have cleared cache and restarted.

:1021170


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  • Our user license didn't actually auto update when it was supposed to, no error indicating that it failed, but that was our problem. We had a fleet of keychains still trying to update with the expired license.
  • Hi All,
    My SAV is now working! This is what I did:

    1-Downloaded SAV for MAC from following link: www.sophos.com/.../sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition-legacy.aspx (N.B. I had to go through process of providing name and email just like a new user)

    2-After downloading (filename is savosx_he_r.zip; different from previous one; ), I uninstalled existing SAV.

    3-Unzipped and installed new application. After installation, the "S" is back in the Sophos icon.

    4-Hit 'Update Now'. I noticed that the file size for update is larger (ca. 165mb?) than the previous (ca. 148mb).

    AutoUpdate Status now shows "Sophos Anti-Virus is up to date".

    Hope this is of help. Good luck!

    Cheers Patrick

  • Dear All,

    It seems the previous "solution" was not entirely correct.

    Back to square one... Same problem as before!

    "Could not contact primary server" status is back.. Don't know what is the problem.. it is not with my ISP..
    Extract of log now reads:

    com.sophos.autoupdate: Error: Failed to download packages at 10:10:55 19 December 2015
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Error: Could not contact primary server at 10:10 on 19 December 2015
    com.sophos.autoupdate: URL is invalid
    com.sophos.autoupdate:

    Am at a loss.. Sophos please help.

    Patrick
  • Getting this same error - six months after OP - Help!

    com.sophos.autoupdate: Proceed with manually triggered update from Sophos at 15:42:13 02 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Updating catalogue information at 15:42:17 02 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Catalogue updated at 15:42:17 02 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Error: Failed to get remote version at 15:42:17 02 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate:        Out of sources at 15:42:17 02 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Error:    Could not contact primary server at 15:42 on 02 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate:     Access was denied
    com.sophos.autoupdate:

  • Hello everyone,

    Updating failures where the network is involved can be tricky to diagnose, as there are a few different things involved: your computer, your connection to your ISP, their connection to other systems, and our provider's infrastructure (we use Lime Light Networks and Akamai to distribute updates around the world). The most complete way to diagnose what is happening is to do a packet trace (tcpdump) while attempting to update as this will capture all the networking events. An easier way to diagnose this problem is to look at the log file /var/log/install.log to see if we wrote any error messages; we should have, if the error happened while downloading the update files. Let us know what you find.

    ---

    Bob Cook (bob.cook@sophos.com) Director, Software Development

  • Hi Bob,
    Thanks for responding. Please see contents of log file /var/log/install.log

    Quote
    Next check=06/01/2016, 7:06 PM (interval=86280.000000, A/C=YES)
    Jan 5 22:08:26 --- last message repeated 1 time ---
    Jan 5 22:08:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdated[364]: BackgroundActivity: Finished Background Check Activity
    Jan 5 22:08:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: Running for UpdatesAvailable
    Jan 5 22:08:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: AssertionMgr: Take com.apple.softwareupdate.NotifyAgentAssertion assertion with type BackgroundTask for pid 71744
    Jan 5 22:08:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: Waiting 120 seconds before sending the notification to App Store
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdated[364]: Adding client SUUpdateServiceClient pid=71744, uid=501, installAuth=NO rights=(), transactions=0 (/System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app/Contents/Resources/softwareupdate_notify_agent)
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: Notifying with params: {
    SoftwareUpdateCount = 0;
    SoftwareUpdatesAvailable = 0;
    }
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: appstoreupdateagent notified
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: AssertionMgr: Cancel com.apple.softwareupdate.NotifyAgentAssertion assertion for pid 71744
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdated[364]: Removing client SUUpdateServiceClient pid=71744, uid=501, installAuth=NO rights=(), transactions=0 (/System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app/Contents/Resources/softwareupdate_notify_agent)
    Unquote

    Cheers Patrick
  • And the latest one after trying to Update again... this has error messages..
    Cheers Patrick

    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdated[364]: Adding client SUUpdateServiceClient pid=71744, uid=501, installAuth=NO rights=(), transactions=0 (/System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app/Contents/Resources/softwareupdate_notify_agent)
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: Notifying with params: {
    SoftwareUpdateCount = 0;
    SoftwareUpdatesAvailable = 0;
    }
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: appstoreupdateagent notified
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdate_notify_agent[71744]: AssertionMgr: Cancel com.apple.softwareupdate.NotifyAgentAssertion assertion for pid 71744
    Jan 5 22:10:26 Patricks-iMac softwareupdated[364]: Removing client SUUpdateServiceClient pid=71744, uid=501, installAuth=NO rights=(), transactions=0 (/System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app/Contents/Resources/softwareupdate_notify_agent)
    Jan 5 22:24:11 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Cannot create stream dci.sophosupd.com/.../a1b4ac6b30e3df7a949e80fa91f5ce26.dat
    Jan 5 22:24:11 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (1.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:11 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Cannot create stream dci.sophosupd.com/.../a1b4ac6b30e3df7a949e80fa91f5ce26.dat
    Jan 5 22:24:11 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (1.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:11 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Cannot create stream dci.sophosupd.com/.../a1b4ac6b30e3df7a949e80fa91f5ce26.dat
    Jan 5 22:24:11 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Not retrying due to reaching maximum retries(3 in 1.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:12 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Cannot create stream dci.sophosupd.com/.../a1b4ac6b30e3df7a949e80fa91f5ce26.dat
    Jan 5 22:24:12 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (0.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:13 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Cannot create stream dci.sophosupd.com/.../a1b4ac6b30e3df7a949e80fa91f5ce26.dat
    Jan 5 22:24:13 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (1.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:13 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Cannot create stream dci.sophosupd.com/.../a1b4ac6b30e3df7a949e80fa91f5ce26.dat
    Jan 5 22:24:13 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Not retrying due to reaching maximum retries(3 in 1.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:16 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Checksum error: deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493
    Jan 5 22:24:16 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (0.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:17 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Checksum error: deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493
    Jan 5 22:24:17 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (1.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:18 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Checksum error: deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493
    Jan 5 22:24:18 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (2.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:19 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Checksum error: deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493
    Jan 5 22:24:19 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Retrying... (3.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:20 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Error: Checksum error: deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493
    Jan 5 22:24:20 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: Not retrying due to reaching maximum retries(5 in 4.000000 s)
    Jan 5 22:24:20 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: [Updater.mm:227] [E73342] Checksum error: deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493
    Jan 5 22:24:20 Patricks-iMac SUL Thread[18482]: [Updater.mm:316] [Updater.downloadUpdate]: Failed to synchronise. Error:
  • There are some "red herring" error messages about the dci.sophosupd.com URL - you can ignore these, they are not significant.

    The error of significance is the lines mentioning "Checksum error". This means that the update software downloaded a file named "deafff5492cc6cf469d55a9d37e33493" but its checksum (internal verification) did not match. This means the download is corrupted. You can try to find that file in your update cache (/Library/Caches/com.sophos.sau/warehouse) and check its MD5 checksum. My guess is that the file is corrupted in some way by your ISP.

    ---

    Bob Cook (bob.cook@sophos.com) Director, Software Development

  • Dear Bob,

    Thanks for the feedback.

    I could not locate the downloaded file in the update cache location you gave. There were certainly a lot of files but not this one. Is this relevant?

    Anybody else having this problem?

    In the meanwhile I will check with my ISP whether they are doing anything which may be corrupting downloaded antivirus files. Not sure how long this will take as it is difficult to get them on the phone. Will report back asap.

    Cheers Patrick
  • I also have this "Could not contact primary server" problem. I see this is the log:

    com.sophos.autoupdate: Updating catalogue information at 11:25:41 30 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Catalogue updated at 11:25:41 30 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Error: Failed to get remote version at 11:25:41 30 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Failed to authenticate at 11:25:41 30 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Error: Could not contact primary server at 11:25 on 30 January 2016
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Access was denied
    com.sophos.autoupdate:
    com.sophos.autoupdate: Proceed with manually triggered update from Sophos at 11:39:32 30 January 2016

    I have v9.2.8, 3.60.0, 5.18

    I tried this with my home ISP and tethered on my iPhone with same results.