Large log file in ZoneAlarm? – A tip

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If you have recently installed ZoneAlarm 9 (such as ZA Free 9.1; ZA Pro 9.1 etc. but it was also found in the earlier such as ver. 9.0.136) you might want to take a look at the size of your log files, or to be more precise, one of them, in the log file folder (usually C:WINDOWSInternet Logs).

(I use the word “installed” to include both new installs and upgrades, since some have seen this in upgrades as well (initially I thought that it might only affect clean installs; a new install or after a complete removal).)

I did this recently.

I have not had any problem with the new version. But for some reason I decided to pay the abovementioned folder a visit. I then found that it had a size of around 3 GB, yes, eh, the size of a medium-large program files folder. I’m not particularly worried about the size of different folders or files, but this was definitely wrong.

It turned out that it was the “tvDebug.log” file that held the lion’s share of the folder’s size, the other files, that have been created so far, were a mere few MB in total. And the file kept on growing, at quite some pace, around 1-2 MB per minute (that’s one GB per workday or more)! This could also be seen in, for example, the Task Manager’s report on I/O writes for the zlclient process; it was in the area of some 100+ million (at the time)! Or very easily seen in the I/O Bytes History in Sysinternals’ Process Explorer; a constant write of some 30-35 kB and a high delta. Something’s amiss.

[indent][/indent]
NB: this has nothing to do with inbound or outbound access log files.

The TrueVector debug log file should be in this folder, but why is it growing and becoming this large? It seems that somehow the “debug level” in ZA is set to “High” by mistake during the installation or by some error in the software (versions mentioned above). More likely the latter, since it doesn’t obey if the settings are changed.

That is, the default setting for debug level is “Default”, I think, since some have had it set at this level before and seen no problems. But in my case (and that was a clean install) and other cases reported it was set to “Default” debug level but seemed to be in “High”, i.e. both “High” and “Default” result in “High”.

Being able to debug a problem is of course very useful, but in this case I guess that only ZoneAlarm technical service can help with that, in case of a severe problem, and then it’s possible to change debug level.

So, if you see this with your “tvDebug.log” file you can change the debug level to “Off”. (After a restart of the PC, the file should be in a much smaller size; eh, 5 byte, in my case. I have also done a test, setting it to “Off” then back to “Default”, but it starts growing with some 30+ kB per second. And no, the “High” setting isn’t adding more, now, that is the error as I see it; both “High” and “Default” generate the same result. I’m going to look at this when I have some time, but I don’t think there is a conflict to debug here, rather an error in the software.)

[*]Ctrl+Shift right-click the ZA tray icon.
[*]Select “Set debug level” and select “Off”.
[*]Restart the PC.

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If you have recently installed ZoneAlarm 9 (such as ZA Free 9.1; ZA Pro 9.1 etc. but it was also found in the earlier such as ver. 9.0.136) you might want to take a look at the size of your log files, or to be more precise, one of them, in the log file folder (usually C:WINDOWSInternet Logs).

I have not had any problem with the new version. But for some reason I decided to pay the abovementioned folder a visit. I then found that it had a size of around 3 GB, yes, eh, the size of a medium-large program files folder. I’m not particularly worried about the size of different folders or files, but this was definitely wrong.

It turned out that it was the “tvDebug.log” file that held the lion’s share of the folder’s size, the other files, that have been created so far, were a mere few MB in total. And the file kept on growing, at quite some pace, around 1-2 MB per minute (that’s one GB per workday or more)! This could also be seen in, for example, the Task Manager’s report on I/O writes for the zlclient process; it was in the area of some 100+ million (at the time)! Or very easily seen in the I/O Bytes History in Sysinternals’ Process Explorer; a constant write of some 30-35 kB and a high delta. Something’s amiss.

Quite a while ago I saw a tip that I used before I quit using ZA. That is create a file in a different folder named tvdebug.log of 0 length. Periodically, either manually or with a scheduled job copy the 0 length file over the “real” one. While not a permanent fix you do have the advantage that in case of an error you’ve most likely already got logged information.

Joe

--Joe

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I just checked this out and did indeed find my “tvDebug.log” file to be over 2GB. I used the suggested solution and having just rebooted, my “tvDebug.log” file is now 0 bytes. Very interesting. Thanks for the heads-up

Upon further research there are quite a few “fixes” out there including but not limited to:

http://tinyurl.com/yevx4q6

http://tinyurl.com/y9s3xub

I found the suggestion posted by Argus a simple method of reaching similar conclusion so THANK YOU!

Hey Jude

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[…]… a simple method of reaching similar conclusion so THANK YOU!

You’re welcome.

Yes, I have seen other, some quite old, some quite convoluted, methods; replacing the log file, deleting the log file, trying to lock the log file etc.

And yes, the abovementiond method, in this case only used because somehow the Default debug level is running at full speed, does turn off debugging, so there will not be a log if something goes wrong. But in many cases it’s possible to replicate the problem, so one can run in debug mode if needed. ZoneAlarm saves a copy of the log file in a zip file; I don’t know the criteria for when it does this (size, age etc.). But if you stop & restart it should backup the old one and create a new one.

Since, in the above situation, the log activity was running amok one could watch the size change in real time, if one wanted. I have earlier mentioned a small tool that can monitor file size changes in real time, quite nifty. Monitoring file size changes in real-time.

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