Mountain Lion Mystery
I upgraded to ML a couple of days after the release. It seemed to work fine and the only thing I noticed was that the number of files on my HD went from about 300K to about 900K. I started a plot of the file count and the HD space. After about three weeks I used a utility to remove all non English localizations which reduced the file count to about 750K and also reduced the HD space; still, nowhere near the 300K of Lion.
Then the strangeness. Over six days the file count went down to about 280K while the HD space didn't change. Then two weeks later it went back up again and then a couple of days ago it has started down again with HD space remaining essentially constant.
I have verified these numbers using Disk Utility and SuperDuper. This is a plot of the behavior
I have Googled and found nothing. I assume that since the HD space doesn't change much while the file count changes by about 500K that these are very small files. NOTE: I do not have Time Machine on.
Any thoughts?
Comments
Solved!
Care to share what was causing it?
mdworker(9642) deny mach-lookup com.intego.mig_hook
The number of such files is equal to the difference between my "normal" count and the abnormal high count.
I filed a report with Intego; they responded in 30 minutes with a setting change that resolved the issue. They have a "Behvioral Analysis" mode that keeps an eye on suspicious activities performed by applications. If any application does anything that could be considered abnormal (such as deleting a large number of files, for example), VirusBarrier X6 will alert you to this. It generates a lot of log files. I disabled it and deleted their log files and all is good.
Originally Posted by RobertJ
My AV application, Virus Barrier X6.
If your company or something isn't demanding that you use anti-virus, get it off your machine immediately.
Having worked in software for 35 years I've learned the hard way that the paranoid survive and those that think their OS is bullet proof are fools.
Originally Posted by RobertJ
In the 28 years I've used Mac's I've had three viruses.
None exist. You've had none.
Your paranoia, as you've seen, causes nothing but problems and bogs down your CPU. The tens of millions of us without anti-virus are just fine.
There used to be viruses for the old OS and there are a couple of trojans on OS X:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/10/03/mac-malware-history/
They actually call Leap-A a virus as it spread via iChat.
Anyway, to diagnose a file count issue, a handy terminal command is the following:
ls -R [directory] | wc -l
You can drag a directory in and it will give you the recursive file count so you'd be able to narrow down where the problem was happening.
http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/05/flashback-trojan-virus-found-to-affect-600000-macs/
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Newly-Detected-Crisis-Virus-Infects-Windows-Macs-and-Virtual-Machines-217207/
http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/intego-security-memo-macdefender-fake-antivirus/
http://betanews.com/2012/04/24/macs-may-not-get-pc-viruses-but-they-sure-can-spread-them/
.
Originally Posted by RobertJ
Really?
http://www.bgr.com/2012/04/05/flashback-trojan-virus-found-to-affect-600000-macs/
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Newly-Detected-Crisis-Virus-Infects-Windows-Macs-and-Virtual-Machines-217207/
http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/intego-security-memo-macdefender-fake-antivirus/
http://betanews.com/2012/04/24/macs-may-not-get-pc-viruses-but-they-sure-can-spread-them/.
Yes, really. Marvin did remind me of Leap, though. Long since obsolete.
sudo find "" | wc -l
where is a directory in the current directory.