Overview

Kerio Connect includes Kerio Antivirus, which provides integrated protection against malicious emails with viruses. At times, you might experience Timeout issues with the Antivirus (AV) plugin.

This article explains the common symptoms when the AV plugin is having TimeOut issues and how to fix it.

Prerequisites

Access to Kerio Connect Webadmin and server-side

Symptoms

When Kerio Antivirus is having TimeOut issues, the following symptoms can be observed:

1. Mailflow stops and all emails are stuck in the Message Queue with the following status:

   4.6.5 Antivirus check cannot be performed.

   

2. The AV engine does not start. Disabling and re-enabling it will produce this error:

   Engine Kerio Antivirus failed to start: Unable to initialize plugin, error: TimeOut for response has expired

   

3. Some emails are not scanned, especially with large attachments. An email notification will be received containing a message like below:

   Problem: Plugin is not responding in specified time.
   MIME type: application/pdf
   File name: JK_automatisering_Factuur_36626.pdf
   Antivirus: Kerio Antivirus engine version/Signature count: (AVCORE v2.1 Windows/x86_64 11.0.1.18 (Aug 9, 2017)/12597391)

Solution

1. Stop the Kerio Connect engine and open the mailserver.cfg file. The default location of this file is:

   • Windows: C:\Program Files\Kerio\MailServer

   • Mac: /usr/local/kerio/mailserver

   • Linux: /opt/kerio/mailserver

2. Look for the Antivir table and here you can find these variables:
   
   

   <variable name="ShortTimeout">60</variable>

   <variable name="LongTimeout">120</variable>
   

   
   
   

3. Double the variable values and save the file so it would look like this:

   <variable name="ShortTimeout">120</variable>

   <variable name="LongTimeout">240</variable>

   • A LongTimeout is used for antivirus checks, and it limits how long a single email scanning can take.

   • A ShortTimeout is a timeout for service operations like initialization or configuration updates.

4. Save the file and start the Kerio Connect engine.

Confirmation

Antivirus now runs smoothly.

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