eEye Digital Security

Ok over the past few days I have definately had updater issues....

Anyone else seeing issues where most or all of the aspects of BLINK will not update or are only partially updating or timing out?

Yes -- I've tried over the past 3 days to manually update Blink.   A 26.9 MB download is started (looks like a significant Blink update, maybe to 3.2?) and the download stops at some point or other in the download.  The error message says: "Unexpected response from the website. Check your proxy settings. If the problem persists, please report this error to support @ eeye.com -- Error code 12002; Description: The operation timed out. 

 So I guess I'll put that in an email to eeye.com -- sound like it's not just me this time.

Tried a variation -- clicked the configuration button on the update form, changing the URL for the Blink update from what it had been set at (not by me) : https://update02.eeye.com/UpdateServer/ to the same URL that the other components of Blink are using:  https://sec.eeye.com/UpdateServer/.  Now the 26.9 MB download is extremely fast and works every time -- yes, I've tried a few times because I still get the red X.  This time, after the dowload, the Application Installation is what fails.  After progress of 80% or so, it backs up and apparently restores to what it had before.  Error message:

Blink: The update script failed to execute. Please check the debug_sync.log file for details. 

I'll see about turning on the debug and trying to generate this log file.

Ok at least its not just me - there must be some kind of issue with this latest update.....

PS: I just tried DAW's advice to change the update server link on my laptop. Immediately the 26 Mb file downloaded AND the update was successful.

I noticed two things: the new IUSER_BLINK user had been reinstalled, and now on restart, I have to stop at the user access screen because a second user has been added. Why is this here?

After reboot, the update server settings have all changed back to https://update02.eeye/UpdateServer/ and, if I tested the update again, I got all red Xs. Arrgh. So, I changed it to https://update.eeye/UpdateServer (no "02") and everything updated fine. Take it for what it's worth, I repeated it on all three machines.

Doing a little forum searching, I see this "new user" issue has appeared before at this link. The remedy is to download Blink from a different location, which should remove the user. This I did, and installed. Now the user is gone, but I can't update! It goes back to red Xs. So I restart the computer ... NOW IT UPDATES but the IUSER_BLINK user is back!

Seems there is corollary between me being able to update successfully, and having to keep this new, and unwanted IUSER_BLINK user setting.

the worst thing about this where is the company view on it?? . or a fix , they dont even join into this forum with an answer ,  if you want to charge for a product , you have to offer some support , they have never returned an email to me or any form of support , i wont pay for another subscription , dont care how good it is  , company needs to get @#$% into gear, 

C K
Australia  

But wait a sec CK and bob p -- remember, our posts started Friday late and continued the weekend.  The eEye folks are probabaly not tuned in yet.   Let's give them until at least a few hrs into Monday (then we can continue complaining...). 

 Also, they did pay attention to a Blink issue I had with slowing down HTML email in Outlook.  Asked me for a log and to try a couple of things.  The problem cleared up later, I'm assuming after an update in the Application Firewall.  Hopefully, my report was part of the fix.

Anyway, give them a little time on this.  With more than a couple people being unable to update, I'm sure the fix will get delivered soon.

The above is agreeded - we have to at least give them a busienss day to look at their forum...

That said - i have seen some very strange updater issues since the early versions..... where it will seemingly change the download server by itself or not use the default one...etc.... I know I have never changed it unless to change it back from what it seemed to have changed to for no real reason...

Not sure - probably just a bug on some machines....

I guess we will await the answer from eeye..

     I have noticed in the past that when you attempt to update Blink and you get a few red X's or so, if you click one of them it will tell you the status.  There have been a few times that it has told me that the servers are down, because they are updating them, etc.    

     Probably going to take longer than a few days, they are stretched for staff and the only folks that really check this forum are the ones that work on Blink, hence they are busy with Blink. Lol  They do not really have a "dedicated" forum team.  I think the company is going through some growing pains right now.  Quite a few folks were laid off and I think they are restructuring in the process.  They will probably lose a fee customers because of this, but patience is the biggest part.  The product line is there, but right now the folks to help are not.  See this:  http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1269907,00.html  

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/qna/0,289202,sid14_gci1268789,00.html 

     Oh and one thing I like to point out, the retard that wrote the first article stated this:

"The trouble with limited value"
One problem for companies like eEye is that their tools are of limited value in enterprise settings, Maiwald said." 

     Obviously this guy did not do his research.  Up until now eEye has ONLY provided all of its products to large business and enterprises (i.e the entire DOD to name one of them).  Just now they started giving their products to the general public and this is why they are restructuring their business, to change their path on what they intend to do (support the everyday person and business at the same time).

Blue1978:

I have noticed in the past that when you attempt to update Blink and you get a few red X's or so, if you click one of them it will tell you the status. There have been a few times that it has told me that the servers are down, because they are updating them, etc.

Jeffrey, yes, I am aware of the server down messages. In fact I saw a lot of that last week.

What I am referring to here is different. The problem right now is, if I want to update Blink on every computer on my system, I must keep that unwanted Blink user file. What's worse is, there is one computer that will not update no matter what I do (undelete, restart, reinstall, etc.*). What happens on that one comuter is this: During update, it quickly downloads the 28Mb file, then shows progress bars as it installs, then at about 99% the progress bars reverse, and up comes a red X. The message associated is something cryptic like (I'm paraphrasing):

"Blink: cannot update 3.1.1 for unspecified reasons."

Fat lot of help that is. LOL

* The last time for the hell of it, I uninstalled, restarted, deleted every entry to eeye or blink found in the registry, restarted, reinstalled the commercial version of Blink (link above in one of my posts), restart, then update. Same problem. It gets to 99%, then fails with a red X. And no Blink user file is ever created on that computer, by the way, and I bet that is the key to this problem.

 
 

I've read these comments with interest. This update issue has happened before and happened to me as well. That said I will say that eEye has usually solved these things pretty quick. In fact I think their support has been pretty damn good. If everyone remembers Blink was originally released for free for one year in the US and Canada, then it was released to Asia and Australia and probably other places as well.

I can't comment on the articles mentioned by Blue1978 but after reading them who ever wrote the article had no clue. Enough of that! Everyone has put up with update problems from MS, all the anti-virus vendors and most all software vendors so why does everyone think that eEye should always be flawless. I think everyone needs to go back and listen to the Security Now podcast with Marc Maiiffret again where he said eEye still has alot of work to do.

Also remember that 1000's upon 1000's of people have downloaded the free version of Blink. And those that did are sending back a mountain of data anonymously to eEye to help with upgrading their Blink product. Somebody has to interpret all that data. It was never mentioned to me that some eEye engineer would also be available to sit at these forums to respond to everyones queries at a moments notice. Very few if any support forums ever respond quickly if at all.

In fact if I had a security company I don't think I'm gonna have my engineers responding to forum queries for every single question that comes down the pike.

 Back to the articles for minute. Remember something about journalists. Most of them are clueless about security. All they want is blood, guts and gore. Look at some of the questions he asked. Things about laying off engineers, the solvency of the company, was Marc Maiffret still there, are they for sale, I mean get real, he sounded like he worked for the national enquirer or something.

The people having new user accounts created when updating Blink is a new one on me, I haven't seen that or has it happened to me. In fact my only updater probs were when I still had ver. 3.0 and I thought that was fixed early on. Since I updated to ver 3.1 and now 3.2 I have Blink set to update every friday at 11am and everything goes just fine. Never had a problem.

When I first got  Blink I originally had the "Neighborhood Watch" edition which was free but discontinued now and I was so impressed with that I bought Blink Personal a couple weeks later. And yes theres been a few problems but nothing I couldn't solve myself or through these forums.

Some people are update freaks and update or try to a dozen times a day which I think with Blink is really not needed. A friend of mine who is a software engineer told me after he downloaded Blink that in his opinion and I quote "if Blink wasn't updated for a year I think it would still work fine well into the future provided it was still used on the same computer it was installed on". What would change on a different computer I don't know but thats what I was told.

With all the different layers of protection Blink is providing I think updating once or twice a week is all the anyone needs to do. But thats just my opinion. Another reason for the update probs may be all these people hitting the server at once. Right out of the box Blink is gonna be set to update same time and same day for everybody so try changing update times to something different and maybe that will help with the update errors.

One more thing for all the folks ready to dump Blink because of a few probs. Right now there are only 271 users registered at the forums here out of all the probably many 1000's of people who have downloaded Blink. Thats not to bad considering the amount of downloads that are probably occuring every day. After all who comes to the forums but people who are having problems in the first place. Just food for thought. I also noticed just a minute ago eEye's Inicula is online so grab him while he's here. Must be dedicated to be here at this time.

Cheers! 

Man that fanboy t-shirt sure is getting tight around the middle!....

SN, my issues are simple: I don't like it when:

• One of the four XP computers that I own around my home (all basically the same) will not do as the other three. That sets me on "troubleshooting-to-find-out-why-so-it-doesn't-do-it-again" mode.
  
• I see error messages from the application that is supposed to guard against viruses and spyware. If it's no big deal, perhaps they should put up a daisy with the message instead of a big red X.
• I see said program also, without asking permission, adds new users to my system.

Just FYI - I too have that IUSER_BLINK user in my user accts and its been there for some time....

I would think removing it will cause issues....and might the part of the trouble -  I believe it showed up out of nowhere many updates back... But I am pretty sure it is supposed to be there ....