Virusbarrier X6 scan says DP7.21 files are corrupted

[jotff]

i ran a full scan of my laptop with virusbarrier 10.6.8 and the program logged 4 files that were supposedly corrupted. all 4 files were MOTU Digital Performer (v7.21) files.

i then opened one of the files and made a minor modification to the file, then saved it and run a scan of the newly saved file. VB came back saying the file was corrupted.

i then created a new file with Digital Performer, then saved it and again ran a scan on the new file. VB came back saying corruption was detected in the new file.

having performed a second full scan of my hard drive, as well as a Disk Utility repair permissions; every file that i've saved with DP 7.21 is labeled as "corrupted" when scanned by Virusbarrier. this includes newly created DP files, as well as files modified by and saved with DP 7.21. if i scan a file last created/modified prior to v7.21, the scan comes back clean. but if i then open the file, saved it with DP 7.21, and then scan it with Virusbarrier X6, it reports the file as corrupted.

i have now scanned my entire hard drive twice and the only files reporting corrupted are all DP files; all of which were created and/or modified with DP7.21. incidently the files deemed corrupted by Virusbarrier still open, play, edit and close just fine in DP7.21.

i sent a pre-7.21 and post-saved-7.21 file to both Intego and MOTU for analysis. i got a reply back from Philippe Devallois at Intego with the following comment:

"All the files detected as corrupted by VirusBarrier have their resource fork in a state that can crash mac os x.

That's a problem if DP is creating files with corrupted resource forks. You should contact the developer to report the issue."

so my question is did you MOTU make a change to DP 7.21 that now causes resource forks to be corrupted?

i have since run a full scan on my desktop mac pro also with the same results - all saved DP 7.21 files are reporting corrupted.

[bayswater]

If you do a search on this board, you will find a thread on corrupted resource forks started by Monkey Man. It looks like 7.21 may be corrupting resource offsets (whatever that means) as you are seeing. Looks like very few people are actually experiencing any problems because of this, but reverting to 7.1 seems to make the problem go away.

[Timeline]

Yikes this is bad. What happens when you save the file to a lower version?

[FMiguelez]

.

If you don't mind my asking, why would you run an antivirus in a Mac?
More specifically, why on a machine that you use as your DAW?

Just curious, that's all.

[monkey man]

A-ha! Another one. That makes three of us so far, I think.

Here's my thread:
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=43438" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FWIW, Disk Warrior's "check files and folders" or whatever the feature is returned the same pattern of results you got with your anti-virus app. Also, it's worth noting that my days-long effort of reinstalling and upgrading the OS and running preference-free, factory installs of DP 7.20 and 7.21 yielded the same results you got.

Returned to 7.12. On my "fat", filled-with-free-apps-and-games partition, 7.12 is perfect even though 7.2 and .21 played up in this way prior to the reversion. It seems therefore to not matter what else is installed, and indeed whether anything else is installed at all on my system (including drivers); the issue is there and real. It's for this reason that I concluded some weeks ago that it'd just be a matter of time 'till others stumbled upon the enigma...

[jotff]

Yikes this is bad. What happens when you save the file to a lower version?

when updating to newer versions of sw, i delete the lower version once i verify normal functionality without any obvious gotchas. i do have the v7 install disc but i cant find any v7.1x updates online anywhere, and i dont know whether the current problem originated in 7.2 or 7.21.

i did try using the Save As option on v7.21 to save an uncorrupted file as a v6 format file. upon running a scan of that new file, it was deemed corrupted also, but that probably doesnt prove anything since it's obviously a v7.21 routine error anyway.

[jotff]

.
If you don't mind my asking, why would you run an antivirus in a Mac?
More specifically, why on a machine that you use as your DAW?

Virusbarrier X6 is more than just a virus protection app. it's a firewall, network protection, anti-phishing, anti-spyware program all rolled into one and is much more thorough than the basic firewall incorporated into OS X. i have it installed on both my macbook pro and my mac pro because i use both machines for more than just DAW duties (i.e. cloud interaction, remote login, e-commerce, etc.).

although the virus threat to macs in general is minimal compared to our PC friends, when i'm online at an airport, i have no use for some whiz trying to gorilla their way into my machine.

i typically just let the program do its thing in the background and i'll get the occasional pop-up message that someone's trying to ping me. VBX6 takes up minimal processing and i've never had an instance where its background processes have impacted any of my DP or Final Cut activities.

i probably would not have even known about this current anomaly but recently a new mac related malware threat surfaced ( http://www.macworld.com/article/155222/ ... rojan.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ) so as a precautionary measure, i ran a full scan on both machines. i'm not particularly paranoid when it comes to mac threats and with VBX6 i dont have to be, because the people at Intego are on the case doing all the dirty work. i suppose i could just take both machines offline, but that aint realistic any more than abstinence - VBX6 is my good judgement and condom solution. with the proliferation of more of apple's little iDevices, for me it's more important than ever to at least make sure my macs are locked down as much as possible for what i do.

[David Polich]

Ask yourself, are your DP projects opening and playing back fine, are
you having any trouble recording, are VI's behaving strangely, is the
audio garbled or fuzzy or clipped or clicky?

If not, then I'd say it doesn't matter if VirusBarrier reports that your
DP files are as radioactive as Chernobyl. Really, I think your problem is
VirusBarrier itself...it is erroneously reporting corruption. You just don't need to be that worried, particularly about the malware that you cited, since
it seems to be designed primarily to wreak havoc on social networking sites,
and also doesn't appear to be very well crafted in the first place.

You'll sleep a lot better if you stop worrying about viruses.

[kassonica]

Ask yourself, are your DP projects opening and playing back fine, are
you having any trouble recording, are VI's behaving strangely, is the
audio garbled or fuzzy or clipped or clicky?

If not, then I'd say it doesn't matter if VirusBarrier reports that your
DP files are as radioactive as Chernobyl. Really, I think your problem is
VirusBarrier itself...it is erroneously reporting corruption. You just don't need to be that worried, particularly about the malware that you cited, since
it seems to be designed primarily to wreak havoc on social networking sites,
and also doesn't appear to be very well crafted in the first place.

You'll sleep a lot better if you stop worrying about viruses.

This is exactly what I think as well....

[monkey man]

So... Disk Warrior's just a worrier too? If DW tells me the damage is irreparable, experience has told me to heed its warning.

When my IR library was deemed Unix Executable some years back, I was told not to worry, and look where that got me; I'm still in the process of reconstructing an unfortunately less comprehensive and impressive one.

David, I hear where you're coming from. The one thing that prevents me from completely dismissing this phenomenon though, aside from previous experiences with corrupt files and DW's judgement, is not knowing what it is and the possible ramifications downline.

Until MOTU is forthcoming with some feedback, I'm willfully missing out on having a dark screen (it hurts!) and using 7.12. It seems to be a fine incarnation of DP anyway for now.

[bayswater]

So... Disk Warrior's just a worrier too?

Not just a worrier, but a lot wordier than a warrior.

[jotff]

If not, then I'd say it doesn't matter if VirusBarrier reports that your
DP files are as radioactive as Chernobyl. Really, I think your problem is
VirusBarrier itself...it is erroneously reporting corruption. You just don't need to be that worried, particularly about the malware that you cited, since
it seems to be designed primarily to wreak havoc on social networking sites,
and also doesn't appear to be very well crafted in the first place.

You'll sleep a lot better if you stop worrying about viruses.

i sleep just fine. but if DP is creating/saving files with bad resource forks, MOTU need to know about.

[David Polich]

If not, then I'd say it doesn't matter if VirusBarrier reports that your
DP files are as radioactive as Chernobyl. Really, I think your problem is
VirusBarrier itself...it is erroneously reporting corruption. You just don't need to be that worried, particularly about the malware that you cited, since
it seems to be designed primarily to wreak havoc on social networking sites,
and also doesn't appear to be very well crafted in the first place.

You'll sleep a lot better if you stop worrying about viruses.

i sleep just fine. but if DP is creating/saving files with bad resource forks, MOTU need to know about.

I'd agree, but in this case, I don't think DP is creating files with
bad resource forks. I think that ViruBarrier is either misreporting the
bad resource forks, or actually creating them itself when it scans the DP files.

This isn't as crazy as it might sound. I had a corrupted copy of Toast 8 once, and every time it did a burn and then verified, it would report bad
sectors. The data on the burned disks would load back onto my desktop just fine, and running Tech Tool revealed no problem with them either. It was just Toast that would give me the report. I switched to Dragon Burn and - no more bad sectors.

The problem could also be specific to your machine - a combination of VirusBarrier, DP, and your specific system.

[jotff]

I'd agree, but in this case, I don't think DP is creating files with
bad resource forks. I think that ViruBarrier is either misreporting the
bad resource forks, or actually creating them itself when it scans the DP files.

DP 7.2x has definitely changed something in its resource fork writing in some way. here's how i know: i have DP files that have not been modified since as far back as 2005. so i pulled a sample of 8 files and performed a GetInfo on each of them. in each case, GetInfo shows the version number of DP that last modified it, except for the DP7.2x file. here are the following versions listed by GetInfo: 4.52, 4.6, 5.0, 5.11, 7.02. 7.1, 7.12

[monkey man]

Reiterating in case appropriate:

Same "Get Info" behaviour here, to a T. Only difference is that DW alerted me to it in the first place.